With the possible exception of some work produced by post-modern wunderkind, photographs that are out of focus, poorly exposed and ill composed are rarely compelling. But The Border Film Project, a collection featuring 150 of such unskilled images, is about as compelling as a book of photography can be.
Rudy Adler, Victoria Criado, and Brett Huneycutt distributed hundreds of disposable cameras on both sides of the US-Mexico border. On one hand there were migrants preparing to illegally cross the border and enter the United States, as thousands of their compatriots do each year. On the other were the Minutemen, armed American citizens who voluntarily patrol the border in the hopes of stoping northward migration.
The three editors soon received over 2000 photographs from the migrants and Minutemen, offering perspectives from both sides of the immigration debate and opening a window through which we gain an intimate perspective of this high stakes game of cat and mouse.
Although photographs from both sides often depict friends, family, and desert landscape, the similarities end there. In documenting themselves, the Minutemen are found engaged in activities reminiscent of a hunting trip. Some have dozed off in lawn chairs, beer cans in hand and pasty bellies turned towards the sun. Others meanwhile are focused on target practice, or are found peering through binoculars off into the horizon, in search of their target. Friendly and fun, the Minutemen have painted themselves in stars, stripes and smiles, as well as the occasional Starbucks and Sam Adams. [More...]
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Posted by Rob Maguire on June 28, 2007 in
The Popular Movement in Oaxaca has its own artist movement, the Oaxacan Assembly of Revolutionary Artists (ASAR-O). A new exhibition at ABC No Rio in NYC brings together woodblock prints and stencil street art created by ASAR-O during the Oaxaca uprising.
ASAR-O was formed during the popular uprising that occurred in Oaxaca during the Summer and Fall of 2006. When police failed to remove striking teachers from the town zocalo, an impromptu citizen’s assembly was formed, the Asamblea Popular del Pueblo de Oaxaca (APPO). Artists took to the streets to communicate the demands of APPO and to help mobilize citizen support. Eyewitness accounts say that streets were covered in art and stencils supporting the uprising, much of which has now been removed and painted over by state officials trying to bury the memory of the popular revolt.
Show runs from April 26 to May 24.
Posted by Michael Lithgow on April 27, 2007 in
XICO GONZALEZ | ¡Ya Basta! End Discrimination |
Could anything be funnier than watching someone you despise rub their eyes after chopping jalapeno peppers? As hard as that is to top, satirical magazine El Chamuco is back on Mexican newsstands, once again causing unavoidable laughing fits after ending several years of suspended animation.
Slang for "devil", El Chamuco features the work of Mexico's brightest editorial cartoonists, taking aim at the country's political outlaws and oligarchs from a left-wing perspective. Artists include Rius, Rafael Barajas, El Fisgón, Antonio Helguera, Helioflores, Hernández, Jis y Trino and Rafael Pineda.
Many of the cartoons can be found on this supposedly non-affiliated blog, which has yet to be shut down by the copyright gestapo.
For more information in English check out this article on SFGate.com.
Posted by Rob Maguire on February 27, 2007 in
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