"Within the Light Trap: Cruz-Diez in Black and White" opens at Americas Society in New York

 

NEW YORK, NY.- Americas Society presents Within the Light Trap: Cruz-Diez in Black and White, the first exhibition in New York and the United States to show the photographic works of this renowned Venezuelan-born, Paris-based modernist artist. Although internationally recognized for his chromatic research, Cruz-Diez’s formation began with an in-depth exploration of mechanical reproduction techniques that included black-and-white photography. As a teenager he built his first minutero camera, a pinhole device that consisted of a frontal lens attached to a wooden box with a cloak at the back. Cruz-Diez developed his skills by learning from Venezuelan street photographers who worked in local plazas—they were called minuteros as they revealed the prints within minutes. Shortly after, he acquired a Rolleiflex camera, which in the 1940s he used systematically to capture everyday life as well as to document popular culture, a subject central to the debates that characterized his generation. He would then develop the photographs and bind the prints to create intimate personal albums, now on view for the first time.

Using a keen ethnographic eye, Cruz-Diez’s beautiful photographs bear witness to a country on the brink of modernization and social economic transformations. His photographs capture the emergence of shantytowns in Caracas, high rises, and infrastructure developments—such as the Plaza O’Leary by architect Carlos Raul Villanueva. He also documented the richness of music and folkloric dance traditions celebrated throughout rural communities in Venezuela that were experiencing significant transformations brought about by rapid demographic changes. Reflecting the racial diversity and cultural hybridity of the country, these images show a distinct local vernacular that was not documented by artists until much later. Some of the photographs on view also show syncretic popular traditions such as “El Velorio de Cruz de Mayo”....

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