Venezuela in Black-and-White

Carlos Cruz-Diez is known for his work with color — paintings where tightly packed stripes seem to vibrate as the viewer shifts perspective, light chambers where participant-observers saunter through drenching color lights. But an exhibit at the Americas Society in New York puts the artist himself in a new light, showcasing his early fascination with photography.

Black-and-white photography.

The exhibit, “Within the Light Trap,” features some 50 photographs – from gem-size contact prints to imposing enlargements – taken in his native Venezuela as the country embraced modernity thanks to its oil boom. Taken mostly during the late 1940s and early 1950s, the images show a country where the folkloric music and dance are found in places old and new; where shantytowns begin to sprout on hillsides in Caracas; and where syncretic religious traditions keep newly citified migrants tied to the rituals of their ancestors.

Learn more about this exhibition.

“When I saw his photos, I saw all the social and participatory aspects of his later work came from here,” said Gabriela Rangel, the Americas Society’s director of visual arts and chief curator. “He wanted people to be involved in materializing color in the body. He was obsessed with people participating in the things he photographed. This is all about people participating in rituals....”

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Image: La Piñata, El Hatillo, estado Miranda, Venezuela, 1953. Courtesy of the artist.