Kiva Bank, Contributing Photographer

On Sept. 27, in collaboration with the La Casa Cultural Center, the Yale University Art Gallery offered Yale students a guided tour of its collection of Mexican photography, which includes works from Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Graciela Iturbide and Ángeles Torrejón. 

Since its opening in June, the current photography rotation has displayed 40 works from 11 different Mexican photographers. The hour-long tour was led by Marcia Brady Tucker curatorial fellow Daniel Menzo and was a part of La Casa’s programming for Latine Heritage Month this year.

“We’re always looking for programming that brings our students into other spaces on campus, and this seemed like a really opportune way to do that,” said Maryam Parhizkar, interim assistant director of La Casa Cultural. 

According to Parhizkar, the tour with La Casa was initiated by Raymond Carlson, the manager of student engagement at the YUAG. The event gave students a chance to engage in conversation with the curator, Menzo. 

This rotation marked Menzo’s first time curating a photography rotation at the YUAG, whose interest in Latin American photography guided his selection process. The black-and-white film negatives span the 20th and 21st centuries and depict a variety of subjects and regions. 

“Once I noticed that we had quite a lot of Mexican photography and works from Mexican photographers, I leaned into that as an organizing principle,” he said. 

Before he began the tour, Menzo encouraged participants to freely explore the room to gain a sense of the overall work.

As he guided the group of eight participants through the collection, his tour was led similarly to a seminar-style art class. Menzo asked participants to examine the composition of Álvarez Bravo’s “Retrato de lo eterno” (Portrait of the Eternal). 

According to Menzo, Álvarez Bravo’s piece called attention to the modernist way a subject’s gaze commanded the story of the photograph. He also said that the Mexican movement of modern photography “[pointed] the camera to new ways of living” and focused on rural life in Mexico. 

Often attributed as the originator of modernist Mexican photography, Álvarez Bravo’s legacy left an imprint on the next generation of Mexican photographers, as he even mentored some of the artists featured in the rotation. 

The field of photography was typically male-dominated, said Menzo, which motivated him to highlight the work of women photographers in the rotation. Female artists, including Lola Álvarez Bravo and Graciela Iturbide, make up the majority of featured photographers. 

Menzo particularly brought the tour’s attention to Nuestra Señora de las Iguanas (Our Lady of the Iguanas), photographed by Iturbide in 1979. 

He asked the group to express one word that came to mind when they looked at the image of a Zapotec woman photographed with several iguanas on her head.

“Crown,” “queen,” “strength,” “magical” and “indifference” were among the words shouted out. 

According to Menzo, the image is one of Iturbide’s most iconic works and is a symbol of strength for the Zapotec region. When Menzo came across Iturbide’s contact sheet for her piece, he examined the 12 printed frames from her roll of film and noticed that the selected work stood out from the other exposures due to the tension between comfort and vulnerability shown on her face. 

One participant, Andrik Garcia Higareda ’25, enjoyed the unique opportunity to engage with the curator and learn about the selection process of the artworks. 

“I’ve been to many, many museum tours, and I feel like you don’t get that chance to intimately guide where the tour is going,” he said. “The size of the crowd was perfect, and people were very active and willing to jump on each other’s points.”

He appreciated Menzo’s curatorial guidance throughout the tour and found it helpful to have someone contextualize and interpret each piece. Garcia Higareda said that this made the tour more accessible to people who did not have a background in photography. 

Garcia Higareda also said that the interactive experience provided deeper context on “what Hispanicity means.” 

Menzo emphasized that the tour was a learning experience for everyone, including himself as a curator. 

“Even while the rotation is up, it’s still an ongoing opportunity to learn with folks in the space,” Menzo said.  

At one point in the tour, Menzo asked about everyone’s personal and academic interests, which ranged from anthropology to the history of the Mexican Revolution. Parhizkar said that she enjoyed learning about others’ disciplinary perspectives and how that affected their commentary on the work. 

“I thought that the engagement was great. I think people were asking really interesting questions,” Parhizkar said. “I think you get those kinds of questions when you have a group that is encouraged to ask questions.”

Although he facilitated the tour, Menzo said that he let student inquiry truly guide the experience. 

“It’s always good to have structure, but it’s always good to also respond to what’s happening in real-time,” Menzo said on his decision to create a conversational environment during the tour.  

Towards the end of the exhibit, Menzo directed the tour to the works of Ángeles Torrejón, who gained special permission from the Zapatista Army of National Liberation to document its female soldiers. 

In her piece Selva Lacandona (Lacandon Jungle), the camera focuses on the gaze of one woman who stares at the viewer with suspicion. Menzo drew attention to the blurred faces of anguish in the background and said that “captures [her] inviting but oppositional gaze.”  

He believes that the surrounding context of the subject is crucial to how one perceives the photograph. Additionally, Menzo emphasized that photographers such as Torrejón built relationships with their communities, which allowed them to record moments of vulnerability and strength. 

“Photography is so often ubiquitous. We all have cameras in our pockets. We all see gazillions of images every day,” Menzo commented. “But it’s really important to slow down your looking and really ask, like, how was this made? What, when? Why? What’s the context? I think that’s when things really start to unfold.”

Menzo hopes that YUAG and La Casa can collaborate through additional tours in the future. 

Mexican Photography from the Gallery’s Collection is on display until mid-November in the James E. Duffy Gallery on the museum’s fourth floor.