Juan Rulfo's Mexico.

Photographs by Juan Rulfo. Text by Carlos Fuentes, Margo Glanz, Jorge Alberto Lozoya, Eduardo Rivero, and Victor Jimenez.

Smithsonian Institution Press, Herndon, 2002. 224 pp., numerous duotone illustrations, 11¾x11¾".

Juan Rulfo was one of the great literary innovators of the twentieth century. His 1955 novel Pedro Páramo is considered one of the foundational classics of magic realism, predating One Hundred Years of Solitude by more than a decade. Lesser known are his haunting photographs of Mexico, which exhibit remarkable parallels to his prose. The photographs, mainly taken between 1945 and 1955, do not tell stories: they present. The images of people and their land, women in their traditional dress, musicians with their instruments, capture the calm, quiet, inner rhythms of Mexico's rural population. Rulfo extracts unique moments through his photographs; his images of desolate, abandoned buildings, their walls destroyed by artillery shells, are expressions of his nation's painful history. His quietly dramatic landscapes recall the work of Ansel Adams and Edward Weston while displaying a style that is truly his own. This collection of 175 images is the only comprehensive collection of Juan Rulfo's photographs available. The six essays preceding the images illuminate the photographs and pay tribute to one of Mexico's most enduring literary and visual artists.
Juan Rulfo (1918–1986) was one of Mexico's greatest modern artists, known most widely for his contributions to literature, receiving Mexico's National Prize for Literature in 1970 and Spain's Cervantes Prize in 1985. Esteemed as a precursor to 'magical realism,' a narrative style famously embodied in the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Rulfo wrote numerous short stories and novels, often taking seemingly simple peasant life as a beginning. What is less known about Rulfo is his photographic output, made mostly during the 1940s and 50s and handsomely presented in this oversize monograph. Rulfo worked exclusively in black-and-white, making 6x6 cm negatives, travelling throughout his native land among the common people. His goal was to present what he encountered, and nothing more-groups of farmers in prayer, women at market, men on horseback, and views from mountainous paths. The results are a true legacy.

Ordering Information

This item is currently unavailable from photo-eye, Amazon and Amazon Marketplace.

Other recent books by Juan Rulfo

Our customers who bought this also purchased

Masonry OFF