ENRIQUE METINIDES

Aug 25

“The street where I lived, San Juan de Letrán, had many movie theaters. I liked to go alone to watch films with Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart. I think the light from these films was what struck me the most.”

A long time ago, I discovered a photograph of Enrique Metinides. This photo was about a female journalist (1) killed in a car crash, lying on a rock hanging over a light pole on the street. Aside from being in shock, I was also attracted by the beauty and mystery of that woman wearing nice make-up along with such an intense gaze in her eyes. At first, I thought it was an image taken from a detective movie. It was not until recently that I came across the author's work again, and I looked closely at the way his work goes further than any of the“tabloids” photographers.

Ⓒ ENRIQUE METINIDES — Ⓒ ENRIQUE METINIDES

Eugenio Matinides, born in Mexico city in February of 1934, took his first photos when he was 10 years old . His father gave him a Brownie box camera, and he began photographing accidents and arrests near a police station in the neighborhood where he lived. Lover of detective movies since childhood, he tried to emulate these facts that appealed to him. His first photo was published at the age of 12, allowing him to become an apprentice without pay for the newspaper "La Prensa", Mexico’s largest newspaper.

Today, EM is considered one of the reporters with the longest history in the journalistic field and his work is shown internationally.

My favorite Metinides’s work is the one he did in color, as it presents a look more attached to fiction than to reality. Images that resemble a movie set more than the tragedy itself.

(2) Ⓒ ENRIQUE METINIDES — (2) Ⓒ ENRIQUE METINIDES

“Two lovers were walking in Chapultepec Park when they were assaulted by two men with a knife. The fiancé confronted them and they killed him. Thus a simple trip to the park became a tragedy. (2)”

EM is a photographer who shows in many of his images an encounter of romance with repulsion, a singular way of making images and what characterizes him: a representation beyond the tragedy, a fiction coming true. We can find notes of beauty in the composition of his images; pieces of realities that take away the breath of those who come across them.

In the process of his career, EM discovers that behind the tabloids and in the way he is portraying his victims, he is no longer only attracted to the subject itself, but to everything that preceded the event, the story behind the tragedy.

EM looks at the morbidity with which the viewer observes, the crowd that was formed in each tragedy. From the street vendor who was never missing in each scene of his photographs to workers, housewives, and children who came out from their dwelling. He also portrayed the "voyeur", changing the format of the police image.

WHAT TO LEARN ABOUT EM

1. He used the disadvantages and tragedies of life as a benefit to represent a new reality.

2. He found inspiration through fictional movies.

3. He photographed without prejudice.

4. He captured the tragedies of reality in an artistic way.

5. He photographed thinking about what was happening around him rather than the protagonist of the scene.

6. He stopped being a photographer on the scene, becoming part of that multitude of observers, he was the personification of that "voyeur" that he portrayed.

CONCLUSION

EM is one of the photographers who personally marks a gap towards the art of photography through the hard work that he demonstrated in the tabloids. As a child he collected toys related to his profession, newspapers, prints, videos and photographs showing tragic events. He is a character who shows tenderness, and yet with tastes that make him extremely strange. It is as if the sum of all the experiences that he calls "simple everyday events" was a reproduction of the fictional films he watched as a child.