STORIES ABOUT US: PHOTOGRAPHS FROM JUÁREZ

In conjunction with FotoFest 1998, DiverseWorks is pleased to announce an exhibition of street photographers working in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Their work presents an eye-opening view of life in Juárez, a city uniquely situated at the confluence of powerful social and economic forces found on the border between Mexico and the United States. The exhibition will feature more than 50 color prints by Javiar Aguilar, Jaime Bailleres, Julián Cardona, Gabriel Cardona, Alfredo Carrillo, Ramiro Escobar, Raúl Lodoza, Jaime Murrieta, Miguel Perea, Margarita Reyes, Ernesto Rodríguez, Manuel Sáenz, Lucio Soria Espino, Aurelio Suárez Nuñez, Luis Torrez, and Carlos Vigueras. Most of the featured artists are staff photographers for Diario de Juárez, the city’s leading daily newspaper.

The photographs in the exhibition tell a disturbing story, one of everyday tensions within this border city. Other photographs offer surprising insight into the nature of survival in this economic frontier town. With a thirty-year history of economic exploitation and unregulated growth, the Juárez/El Paso community is a model of what the world is racing to become a world in which powerful industrial states transform the cultural landscape of other nations they tap for cheap labor. The uncompromising work of these governments and economists are often masked by statistics and rhetoric.