Exoticism and eroticism in women's representation
I. The girl of many eyes.
The look is a girl with many eyes. Yes, indeed, a little monstrous, as the child of Tim Burton, whose misshapen head, eyes invade countless other ways. I also found this strange sight girl, the other day in the park, but do not talk about their kinds of poetry but of ethnic picture and the problem of knowledge through which one looks the other eye.
photographically perceive and represent ethnic groups, with the eyes of our own history, identity, experience, artistic endeavor or scientific, political positioning, socioeconomic class, knowledge, imagination, etc.., ie from a particular culture that washes our view of meaning. Thus, even though the eye of the photographer wants to pass as an innocent and naive girl eyes encounters with otherness, rather it is a dead fly girl, who constructs images of the other for herself, so far general, a deep knowledge of ethnic groups.
II. The girl exotic Maler
A business card in albumin and two collodions, made in 1873 and 1874, are the oldest pictures I know about women in the Mixteca in Oaxaca Coast. These pictures were taken by the German architect Teobert Maler, who joined the Austrian army in 1864 to support French troops in Mexico and after the intervention was devoted to selling hats parallel inside the country and touring portraiture.
Maler's photographs, the researcher Ignacio Gutierrez says, "are not popular types or ethnic or morphological types and much less images of the exotic but images of self-affirmation of the subjects represented for your enjoyment, privacy and family environment. " Notwithstanding the question of the enjoyment was true in the case of Mixtec women have referred their portraits and they have been portrayed by his own will, which is likely since devoted itself Maler, between 1868 and 1878, to photograph clients in rural and indigenous populations, especially indigenous women and asked for it, the author does not seem to escape all the ethnic type, exoticism and the positivist philosophy that dominated the era.
Teobert Templates
It is noteworthy that none of the young Mixtec go straight to the camera. All profile pose with a neutral expression, absorbed in their thoughts, say their eyes at some indeterminate point in the scene. Their eyes make me think that the camera and / or photographer inspired them some discomfort or fear, caused perhaps by the fact that being portrayed means open to the perception of who is watching us, to let our body and face, and our experiences and contexts to be read by another, a man alien suspect that these women knew next to nothing.
Maler In the images, there is little context and interaction between photographer and photographed. It is rather a distant look in that sneaks some type of Mixtec women, not only because they are portrayed in a study that separates them momentarily from their culture, but because they are guided to be placed in a certain position and accommodate their pitchers in certain way.
The attempt to control some aspects of the scene and portrayed women as well as decisions to emphasize certain aspects through a cut or a specific angle, always carry the position of the photographer and his particular views on the world and people it portrays. Maler a single trial did not apply to groups ethnic for him outside the Indians was not as miserable as surface descriptions might suggest, sometimes clothing, food and sanitation were inadequate, but in others, the Indians swam almost daily and especially girls were noted for their beautiful traditional dress and always clean.
While I do not know which of these categories were considered Maler Mixtec women, portraying usually half-length or three quarters, stood besides the clothes, the nakedness of their breasts, a feature that seems to have since become reasons of strangeness and exoticism.
Teobert Maler
III. The girl erotic Mutschlechner
Almost a century after Maler's photographs, another German, industrial photographer Mario Mutschlechner, conducted between 1967 and 1969 color images of women in the Mixteca de la Costa, in the municipalities of San Agustin Chayuco, Santa Maria and Santiago Nuti Ixtayutla.
It took 41 years for the author to publish these photographs in his book Ñundeui, at the foot of the sky ( conaculta , 2008). Given this timing, which occurred between the manufacturing and publishing images, the photographer was not able to establish a critical distance from their own images, nor with the realities that emerged. The unfortunate result is a book that stands by poverty and lack of updating their visual and written speeches. His images are available on http://zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/nundeui/index.html.
Mario Mutschlechner
So in the XXI century, conceives Mutschlechner Mixteca de la Costa as "a wonderful island in the inhuman hurricane of modern times" and their photographs of the Mixtec women as a "handful of images that look innocent but until the driest part of man." And is that although at the time the author acknowledged problems existed in the communities of alcoholism and poverty, the preferred as it says in your own words "invent a tropical paradise," a world without malice, a retreat. " their tropical paradise in the timeless, the Mixtec are an isolated group, innocent and pure, who live in communities without conflicts or greed, the noble savages of yesteryear. Under
browser romantic eyes, there is simply no place for violence. accommodates What are your ideals and personal preferences based on which justifies the imposition of the erotic gaze: "What I like about these people was its purity. When viewing these topless women is evident that the wickedness of the nude not exist in his culture. "In his images, as in the case of Maler appear topless young women carrying jugs of water, but this time not in a studio, but bathing in the river or integrated into the tropical flora . Mixtec women sometimes seem rather watched by a voyeur photographer and lest we forget that the photographer likes indigenous breasts also have a couple of approaches to women's breasts Mixtec.
Mutschlechner 's photographs make me think that between the exoticism and eroticism of the photographic view there is only one letter that differentiates them in the end both deal with the excitement aroused by the visual, the first at the new and the strange, the second to the sensual.
also reminds me of Roger Bartra when he noted that the ethnic history of photography there are two blind spots: violence and eroticism. On the one hand, explains Bartra, the old stereotype of Indians as violent, bloodthirsty, dangerous, hostile aliens and mysterious beings who kill their own kind, has caused many photographers refuse to play this defamatory archetype. However, the violence is there and the photographer should reveal it. Likewise, photographers have shown reluctant to undress erotic gaze Indians with their cameras and enter the sensual intimacy of the Indians because of another archetype, the photographer and representative of modern society refuses to play the role of male conqueror who enters and rapes the helpless society Indian as its chamber is a phallic extension of the powers of the dominant society. So when it is doing so on behalf of science and progress with an objective lens devoid of eroticism. But the camera ends up betraying his own and put yourself in a position erotic naked bodies wandering around, I'll walk sexy and provocative smile insinuate the silhouette of unspeakable sexual desires, attractions, petting and flirtation.
Mario Mutschlechner
True Mixtec women have been on several occasions looks and represented with this type of hidden eroticism, torn from their contexts and cultural identities pivilegiar only the aesthetic qualities of the image, or the intentional cover looks fanciful. In all cases, look, this girl appeared dead fly at the beginning of this essay, is transformed into a wicked woman in your imagine ultimately denies the other's existence.
Perhaps a possible solution to this selfish eye of the camera implanted in Mixtec women, is that photographers and apply some of the ideas from the sixties, anthropology asks: question of ethnographic authority (in this case photography) , abandoned as a source of power and legitimacy ethnographic discourse (photo), and try restorative informants (pictured) his own voice (image) into a mechanism of self-representation to generate a real dialogue and enables a visual representation fairer Mixtec women, through their own ways of being and being in the world.
Valeria Vega
June 2010
Ñundeui, at the foot of the sky
Answering Valeria Vega
by Mario Mutschlechner
just found in ethnic look (http://www.miradasetnicas.blogspot.com /) Article "Exoticism and eroticism in women's representation Mixtec" the ethnologist Valeria Vega public in June 2010 about my book Ñundeui, at the foot of the sky.
I will give my point of view of the findings of the ethnologist and thereby attempt to clarify "the problem of knowing through which eye is looking the other."
First of all I stress what I said in the book: Ñundeu i es una visión personal y de ninguna manera una representación etnográfica de las mujeres mixtecas. Es un trabajo artístico apreciado por destacados conocedores del mundo indígena como el recién fallecido escritor Carlos Montemayor, el lingüista e investigador del México antiguo Patrick Johansson, el arqueólogo Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, Culturas Populares del Conaculta y el periódico La Jornada, entre otros.
La oportunidad de retratar indígenas que no conocían los modelos occidentales del porte femenino, que no sabían de sostenes y de maquillaje fue significativo e importante for me. I tried to capture the natural beauty and sensuality of these young people without ever intervening in the way it is presented to the camera or, to quote Valeria Vega, without being involved in "their own way of being in the world."
Disappointed and hurt by capitalism dehumanized Germany of the Sixties I played that Indian culture from my point of view. wanted to "invent a tropical paradise" as a counterweight to the gray cities of Germany, a mechanized society of which came with a motivation and colors similar to those of the painter Paul Gauguin. To me these women made and represent a culture integrated tropical nature, to enjoy the time, silence, of their own emotional, and Knowing the sanctity and harmony of nature, values \u200b\u200bthat our Western society discarded in exchange for money and material goods .
did these photographs to emphasize that human beings are part of nature and that we learn from ancient cultures to live in harmony with it.
Many years later, based in Mexico City, discovered that some of my photographs displayed some of the most beautiful and popular verses of poetry Hispanic and mates to walk together.
This way I could illustrate with indigenous youth the ancient wisdom of "flower and song," I managed to connect with the transience of life and with the fact that the only thing that transcends the man is his art and thought.
To further reinforce this connection with the wisdom and world view of ancient Mexico exotic I have linked my pictures with pictograms codices
Columbian. This three-dimensional presentation of the Mexican indigenous world, never before performed, creates a synergy of forms, rhythms and meanings, which, in the words of Patrick Johansson "reconciles nature and humanity, reconciling past and present, and gives the look and feel the eternity of the moment. "
Valeria Vela I thank for having reported a photographer German Teobert Maler, who portrayed Mixtec women over 125 years. I'm the first to understand and evaluate the technical difficulties of any kind, this man must have passed at the beginning of photography to achieve its ethnographic documents. I also appreciate that Valeria is familiar with some villages in the Mixteca Mixteca Baja and the Coast and we talk, for example, violence in Santiago Ixtayutla.
conclusion appreciate your effort to analyze my work and point of view, but I do not understand that Ñundeui, at the foot of the sky is more than a document, poetry. Although she disagrees with the fact that I have portrayed in their natural Mixtec women should recognize semi-nudity, I did it with respect and with a vision that goes beyond their sensuality and physical presence.
For those who want to meet at the foot of the sky Ñundeui Annex league editorial
EDUCAL, which is available
http: / / www.educal.com.mx/detalle.php?categoria=&folio=3578&titulo
league and its presentation in 2009 by La Jornada:
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2009/08/22/index.php?section=cultura&article = a04n2cul
Mexico City, January 18, 2011
mario.mutschlechner @ gmail.com
