Mario Algaze Explained

Mario Algaze
Birth Date:1947
Birth Place:Havana, Cuba
Death Place:Florida, U.S.
Website:http://www.marioalgaze.com

Mario Algaze (1947 – 28 September 2022) was a Cuban-American photographer who photographed musicians and celebrities, in rural and urban areas, throughout Latin America.

Early life

Algaze was exiled from Cuba in 1960, when he was 13 years old and moved to Miami. Self-taught in photography, he enrolled to study art at Miami Dade College, Florida in the 1970s and went on to work as a freelance photojournalist for national and international publications including the Miami Herald.[1]

Career

Starting work as a photojournalist in 1971, Algaze went often to Latin America, and the Caribbean (including his native Cuba) to make photographs.[2] From 1979 to 1981 he was the director of the Gallery Exposures in Coral Gables, Florida. During the 1970s he photographed Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney and Frank Zappa.[3] In 1992 Algaze, who previously had developed his photographs in the bathroom, was one of 71 visual artists working in photography and crafts awarded Visual Artists Fellowships of $20,000. He used the fellowship to install a darkroom in his home in which to create 86 exhibition-quality images.[4]

Reception

In 1983 Ricardo Pau-Llosa wrote that:

The kind of photograph which Algaze pursues is more than a frozen image, the souvenir of flux, a stay of mutability. These photographs reveal the spirit of a moment in human space (the "subjects are usually human beings, cities, streets, walls, plazas, rooms, shops, artifacts) as much as the workings of consciousness that graps [sic] this spirit. [...] His is not a tourist's eye giddy with compassion for fallen places. What comes through in his photographs is not simply the arduous predicament of life in Latin America, but the unique scenarios in which life reveals itslef [sic] in this part of the world.[5]
Museum of Photographic Arts (MoPA) curator Carol McCusker wrote of Algaze that he "steadily built a sum view of Spanish-speaking countries that no other photographer has done before or since." Curator Jorge Zamanillo remarked that many of Algaze's photographs "evoke the cinematographic spirit that Fellini's films have."

In Mario Algaze: Portfolio Latino Americano, his friend and colleague, curator Ricardo Viera interpreted his photography as pervasively revealing the often contradictory layering of cultures in Latin and South America.[6]

Benjamin R. Fraser, Editor-in-Chief of Hispania, perceiving that a 'magic realism;' a Latin idyll, is read into, or imposed on, Algaze's oeuvre, writes in 2004 that "one may somehow suspect that even Algaze's role is not neutral," and "that there might be self-tropicalization on his part," in his exclusion of modern, industrial artefacts and goods from his imagery.

Vince Aletti surveyed his work in A Respect for Light: The Latin American Photographs, 1974-2008 published in 2014,[7] and notes in his foreword that Algaze's theme is "Latin America, both as a place and a state of mind."[8]

Algaze returned to his homeland Cuba in 1999 after nearly four decades in exile; curator and writer Elizabeth Ferrer attributes Algaze's project to photograph across South America to a nostalgic desire to find "echoes of a beloved Cuba in the old quarters of Latin American cities."[9]

In 2022 Algaze died in Florida on 28 September.[10]

Individual exhibitions

Group exhibitions

Awards

Bibliography

External links

Notes and References

  1. News: 9 April 1978 . Contents Apr 9 : On the cover . 390 . The Miami Herald.
  2. Fraser . Benjamin R. . 2004 . Problems of Photographic Criticism and the Question of a Truly Revolutionary Image: The Photographs of Mario Algaze, Juan Rulfo, and Manuel Álvarez Bravo . Chasqui . 33 . 2 . 104–122 . 10.2307/29741885 . 29741885 . 0145-8973.
  3. Web site: Retrospectiva fotográfica de Mario Algaze . 2022-10-11 . diariolasamericas.com . es-US.
  4. Book: Yates, Sydney R. (Chairman) . Department of the Interior and related agencies appropriations for 1995 : hearings before a subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives, One Hundred Third Congress, second session . U.S. Government Printing Office . 1995 . 9780160439681 . United States . 855 . 30315526.
  5. Book: Algaze . Mario . The spirit of place : Mario Algaze : photographs. . Pau-Llosa . Ricardo . 1983 . The Gallery, Miami-Dade Community College North . 1983 . Florida, USA . n.p . 1316725686.
  6. Kelm . Bonnie G. . Summer 1993 . Museums as interpreters of culture . Journal of Arts Management, Law & Society . 23 . 2. 127–135 . 10.1080/10632921.1993.9942926 .
  7. Book: Algaze . Mario . A Respect for Light : The Latin American Photographs 1974-2008 . Aletti . Vince . Glitterati . 2014 . 9780991341962 . 1st . New York . 889520930.
  8. News: Smith . Douglas F. . 21 November 2014 . Review : "Algaze, Mario. A Respect for Light: The Latin American Photographs: 1974-2008" . Xpress Reviews . Library Journals, LLC.
  9. Book: Ferrer, Elizabeth . Latinx Photography in the United States: A Visual History . University of Washington Press . 2021 . 9780295747644 . ebook . United States . 137.
  10. Web site: Mario Algaze Obituary (2022) . 2022-10-11 . Legacy.com.
  11. News: 27 October 1974 . Advertisement . 208 . The Miami Herald.
  12. News: Greenberg . Herb . 3 November 1974 . Art Galleries : Bacardi Art Gallery . 8 . Boca Raton News.
  13. News: 11 August 1978 . Art : Selected Commercial Galleries . 64 . The Miami Herald.

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