Getty’s newest present turns the highlight on Mexico’s biggest image-makers – and the way they constructed a century of labor by friendship and rivalry

When you see an iconic {photograph} hanging on a gallery wall, it is tempting to imagine this was the creation of a lone visionary. If so, a brand new exhibition at The Getty Center, within the Brentwood space of Los Angeles, will set you straight.

Instante / revelación: Moments in Mexican Photography gathers work from 13 practitioners throughout 9 many years.

It makes the case that Mexico’s wealthy photographic custom was constructed not by remoted geniuses, however by a vibrant community of pals, academics, college students and even {couples} who saved capturing the identical streets, the identical faces and typically the identical bathtub.

I’m not being flippant with that final bit, by the best way. One of the present’s threads follows Graciela Iturbide’s sequence shot inside artist Frida Kahlo’s lavatory at Casa Azul, many years after the latter’s demise, the place crutches, orthopaedic braces and a Stalin poster sit oddly collectively within the tub.

Strange, however true.

Masterclass in framing

Another factor I like is that reasonably than presenting all this work chronologically, curator Julieta Pestarino has organized it into 5 themes, every named after a line from Octavio Paz’s poem Cara al tiempo, written to accompany Manuel Álvarez Bravo’s photos within the 1982 e book that provides the present its title.

One of those sections, La sensación y la percepción (“Sensation and perception”), supplies a masterclass in framing.

Back in the late 1920s, Álvarez Bravo figured out that if you crop tight enough or shoot from an interesting enough angle, an ordinary scene stops looking ordinary. You can see the same trick in later work by Iturbide, Pedro Meyer and Cecilia Salcedo Méndez.

The latter shoots a cluster of seed pods against black until they look more like sculpture than plant matter. Meyer does it with a nautilus shell, shooting so close that scale disappears and all that’s left is light and curve. “Ahead of their time” doesn’t really cut it.

An uneasy truce

Another section, El ojo piensa, el pensamiento ve (“The Eye Thinks, Thought Sees”) section, examines the relationships between photographers and Mexican artists including Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Rufino Tamayo, Octavio Paz and Juan Rulfo.

This means we get, for example, a dramatic Rodrigo Moya portrait of Rivera and Siqueiros standing shoulder to shoulder in front of a mural: two rival titans of the art world sharing an uneasy truce for the camera.

The final section, El tiempo no cesa de fluir (“Time never stops flowing”) grounds all this experimentation in history.

This spans everything from the economic boom of the mid-20th century, aka the “Mexican Miracle”, through to a haunting image by Pablo Ortiz Monasterio – a wind-bent cactus with graffiti scrawled beneath it, demanding the return of the 43 students who disappeared in Ayotzinapa in 2014.

Instante / revelación: Moments in Mexican Photography runs on the Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Drive, Los Angeles, from September 01 2026 till January 03 2027. Admission is free, however timed entry tickets have to be booked.