| | | | | | | | | | | | | MExico | | | | A unique photographic journey in Black and White through Mexico during the presidential elections in the year 2006 | | | | Find MExico here: www.kickstarter.com | | | The crowdfunding campaign for the book project to be launched by Kehrer Verlag
is online until September 30, 2017
Updates: www.fotografischesatelier.com | | | | | | | | | | © Samantha Dietmar - Oaxaca, Oaxaca de Juárez | | | | | | Samantha Dietmar, German photographer and artist living in Berlin, is launching this kickstarter campaign to help raise funds for covering the costs of publishing her photographic project on Mexico from the year 2006 in a book under the title MExico. ME and Mexico.
For this project she travelled with a Mexican photographer from January to May 2006 all over the south and middle part of the country. She documented the election campaign "La Otra Campaña" of Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN), which was organized at the same time as the official presidential election campaign, in a difficult political climate.
The "Other Campaign" - unarmed Zapatista alternative - which promoted an anticapitalist alliance to the public, was lead by subcomandante Marcos. Dietmar had the occasion to accompany him on parts of his travels through the country by integrating a group of journalists for alternative media.
>From the very beginning of her stay in Mexico, what started as a photoreportage, became more and more a photographic journal with a larger view. Her Mexican journal mirrors in a very questioning way the power, the culture and the beauty of Mexico, but also its poverty and the repression.
In a very consequent way she focusses on the importance of everyday life: From the presidential election campaign to Zapatist campaigns, from the World Water Forum (with Danielle Mitterand) to the 1st of May Workers’ demonstrations, from tourists to the country people - these photos reflect our time and the world we live in. With their artistic approach they are at the same time a very personal document.
Dietmar’s very personal approach and individual way of exploring the world creates a vision of unity. Following her aesthetic strategy, she searches, finds and looks very closely at what she found. In presenting these individual black and white photographs, which like entries in a diary are connected with her personal experiences, she develops her story about Mexico, a story which is straight forward on the first glance, but full of details when you look closer at it, and therefore has not lost anything of its freshness and importance for today. Cracks and scratches seem to appear on the surface of Dietmar’s photos, they have this fragmentary, unfinished character, which gives them their special authenticity. Often she does not clearly focus on the people she takes the portrait of, the visible grain adds to this impression of disintegration. Photos of places and landscapes, details, rooms, complete the picture Dietmar paints of the situations and moments she witnessed.
Samantha Dietmar’s journey through Mexico came to a brutal end in San Salvador Atenco, where she photographed violent clashes between the inhabitants of this town, left wing activists and the police: she was arrested, and shortly afterwards expulsed from the country.
This work of 4000 negatives, voluminous, but somehow unfinished, has now been edited by Samantha Dietmar in collaboration with Sabine Schmid. | | | | | | | | | | © Samantha Dietmar - Tlaxcala, Tlaxcala | | | | | | Samantha Dietmar (b. in Munich in 1978) studied communication design at the University of Applied Sciences in Würzburg. In addition to reportage, theatre and dance photography, she focuses on long-term projects. In 2008, she was awarded the 20th Promotion Award by the German Association of Freelance Photographers (BFF) for her photo book "ÜBER VIELES. UND NICHTS". Her works were featured in many exhibitions, amongst others at the photokina in Cologne (2006, 2008) and at the Museum Villa Stuck in Munich (2010, solo exhibition, catalogue). Samantha Dietmar lives and works as a freelance photographer in Berlin.
Samantha Dietmar
"MExico"
with an essay by John Berger
114 black and white photographs
144 pages
English/Spanish/German
Concept and editing: Samantha Dietmar, Sabine Schmid | | | | | | | | | | © Samantha Dietmar - Chiapas, Huixtla | | | | | | unsubscribe here
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