Date: Jun 4--Jun 17, 2010

Venue: The National Art Museum of China, Beijing

The photography works displayed in the National Art Museum of China are created by the Mexican photographer Pedro Meyer.

Pedro Meyer, born in a Jewish family, 1935, immigrated to Mexico and joined in the Mexico nationality in1938. At the age of 11, he began to learn photography; at the age of 15, he published the first photography work. After the completion of university education in the United States, he went back to Mexico. After more than 50 years of photographic practice, Mr. Pedro has become one of representative of photographers in the field of modern photography. The expression form of his works shows his unique perspective and rich changes in his photography works, covering a wide scope ranging from social documentary photography to digital art photography.

Because of his outstanding performance and exploration in the field of photography, he won the Mexican national cultural contribution award and Italian international culture award in 1985, the Guggenheim bonus in 1987, and national art prizes jointly awarded by the California Museum of Photography and Jonathan·Green in 1993.

With the rigorous documentary photography, he stepped into the filed of images, carrying out the profound thinking and mining of special Latin American culture, which formed the deep and spiritual quality of image languages. His respect to various Mexican cultures and values, is fully embodied in his works of displaying the mutual conflict, collision, blending and mixing among the Indian culture, European culture and colonial culture of indigenous people, under the social environment, namely the coexistence of being modern and traditional, poverty and luxury, and primitive and civilized. Pedro’s photography explores the Mexican and Latin American national cultures and spirits, which have already constructed the thought train of Mexican photography and made him, become the worthy core representative of modern photography.

In terms of photography, after his success in traditional documentary photography, he, keeping pace with the digital technology of the times and using the image processing function and technology of the computer software, reproduced the image synthesis called "new documentary consciousness" by himself, which is surrealistic. He thought this could more reflect the true feelings of photographers upon particular objects. Photographic creation in this aspect also laid him the pioneer status in the history of digital photography.

This exhibition will display 110 photography works of Pedro, which are representatives of his works created in different stages, which can help us understand his personal artistic style, photography achievements and the influences to modern photography in Mexico.
 

Photo: Yan Chuan (Artron.net)