SWC Photography Instructor Todd Stands’ photography class visits the Flor Garduño exhibit at the San Diego Museum of Photographic Arts.
Adjunct instructor Todd Stands accompanied his Art 205-Beginning Digital photography students to the Museum of Photographic Arts (MOPA) in Balboa Park to see Flor Garduño’s Trilogy exhibition, which has been shown in galleries and museums all over the world.
MOPA has more than 80 of Garduño’s black-and-white images on exhibit.
Stands said he has seen Garduño’s images at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
“It is always great to see original prints,” he said. “This shows a retrospective of her.
How her work has evolved and its consistency over 20 years.”
Stands’ former photography student SWC alumna Leslie Oropeza said Garduño captures beauty.
“What I liked the most about the exhibition was the way Garduño captured the essence and simplicity of women and nature,” she said. “Her photographs give you a sense of how something simple can be beautiful and complex in its own way.”
Garduño’s first choice was to pursue a career as an artist. She attended the San Carlos School of Fine Arts in Mexico City. Garduño’s teacher, Hungarian war photographer Kati Horna, impacted Garduño’s development.
Garduño printed her work in silver, platinum and the palladium process which defined her career. She worked with photographer Mariana Yampolsky for the Secretariat of Education for Indigenous Communities. Garduño visited remote rural areas to photograph educational subjects for reading primers. Garduño’s relationship with Mexico’s indigenous peoples and their way of life inspired her numerous photographic books, “Magia del Juego Eterno” 1985 and “Bestiarium” 1987.
Garduño’s black-and-white photographs celebrate natural light and shadows exploring magical dreams, nature, animals, indigenous peooples’ cultural rituals and the sensual female body. Her still life photos feature flowers, pomegranates, a bowl of cherries, fish with cherries and succulent squash.
SWC student Martika Fernandez said she enjoyed Garduño’s Ecuadorian image from the Bestiarium collection of Trilogy “Mujer con perrito” (Woman with a little dog).
”I liked this picture,” she said. “You feel like you are seeing a picture taken in the 1930s or ‘40s in a small western town. The woman holding a small dog had to wait a few feet behind while the men went up to the bar to get their drinks.”
Martika felt that one of the men seemed to be wealthy while the other three and the Ecuadorian woman were poor.
Photography student Deana Cave was moved by Pecado original (Original sin) Mexico 1999, from Garduño’s “Silent Natures” collection.
“This photo depicts the tempter and the temptation not those tempted,” she said. “A lot of times people want to blame the woman, Eve, yet Adam did exactly as she.”
Cave stated Adam and Eve were both disobedient to God in partaking of the fruit. Cave saw that the blame should be upon the serpent and his tool of temptation.
Garduño’s “Silent Natures” collection features Peonía (Peony) Switzerland 2005.
Photography student Lena Gunter-Palacios said she enjoyed this black-and-white print.
“Peonía is a beautiful progression of a single flower falling apart in what seems to be a body of murky water,” she said. “It is falling apart, looks like a firework in some way,” she said.
Art history major Raquel Dalton summarized her interpretation of Garduño’s exhibition.
“Trilogy represents the dreams, fantasies and life of the artist,” she said. “Garduño’s exhibition was divided into three parts, Bestiarium, that represented animals and men in one person. Mujeras fantasticas (Fantastic Women) represents mythological elements from Mexican and Latin American cultures and Naturalezas silenciosas (Silent Natures) is what Flor made for herself, for her soul.”
Garduño’s “Trilogy” collection comprises 30 years of black-and-white images and included emotional views of native peoples of Latin America, her majestic female nudes and still-lifes.
Dalton stated Garduño is an amazing Mexican photographer whose incredible work is represented at MOPA.
“I really loved the Trilogy exhibition,” she said. “Garduño’s work demonstrates her personality and her perfect abilities with the camera.”
