Southwestern & Mexican Photography Series, the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University – serie

Winner, Jury selection, American Institute of Graphic Arts, 2001Communication Arts 2001 Design Annual, 2001Featured title in Print A-Z, 2001Haunting in their mystery and beauty, Keith Carter's horses fill the frame like spirits in a dream-but without ever ceasing to be real horses. Whether he's photographing thoroughbreds preparing for the elaborate maneuvers of dressage or a farm nag grazing in a field, Carter meets horses on their terms, not his. Looking into their enigmatic eyes in these photographs, you wonder, "What are these creatures thinking?" until you realize that Keith Carter's horses never really give up their secrets.This volume collects some 75 duotone images of horses and riders, most of them never before published. Accompanying the pictures is a photographer's statement, in which Keith Carter describes the genesis of this project and muses on what it is about horses that draws him to them as photographic subjects. Distinguished art and photography critic John Wood places Carter's equine photos within the wider Western tradition of painting and photographing animals, while praising Carter's rare ability to portray animal subjects without producing kitsch. In his words, "Carter is probably photography's first truly great master of the animal photograph, and none of his other animal photographs are more powerful than his photographs of horses."

Mary Ellen Mark is an internationally acclaimed photographer who has long been fascinated by the complex relationships between people and animals-as she puts it, “the anthropomorphic quality of animals, and the animalistic quality of man.” This fascination has lured her again and again to Mexico and India, two countries that, despite their many differences, share “a primal force . . . that makes the relationship between man and beast even more obvious. There is a more fundamental and intimate working relationship between the people and animals, and this relationship is something I am drawn too and try to convey in many of my photographs.”Man and Beast presents an extended photo essay comprising images from Mexico and India that span some forty years. Many of the Indian images were taken while Mark was working on her classic book Indian Circus (1983), but most of the photographs have never been previously published. Infused with an unsentimental poignancy and a fully intentional anthropomorphism, Mark’s photographs of animals, circus performers, children, and others are sometimes ironic, occasionally unsettling, but always remarkably engaging. Accompanying the images are a photographer’s statement and a conversation between Mark and Melissa Harris, editor-in-chief of Aperture Foundation, covering Mark’s lifelong passion for animals, her experiences photographing them in circuses with their trainers, and her efforts to portray the humanity of animals and the lurking beast within humans.

Rodrigo Moya is a prominent Mexican documentary photographer who began as a photojournalist in 1955. He covered the convulsive period that shook Latin America during the 1950s and 1960s, including the guerrilla movement in Guatemala, the invasion of Santo Domingo, and the Cuban Revolution, producing the iconic images “Guerillas in the Mist” and “Melancholy Che.” Since the 1960s, Moya’s work has broadened to encompass more of Mexico and Latin America-the land and sea, people both famous and anonymous, religious processions, the streets of Mexico, laborers, and cultural events involving theatre and dance. Moya’s photography is receiving renewed attention and acclaim in the twenty-first century, including the Espejo de Luz for his photographic career at the VI Bienal Mexicana de Fotoperiodismo and the Medal of Photography Merit from the Sistema Nacional de Fototecas (Instituto Nacional de AntropologÍa y Historia).Rodrigo Moya: Photography and Conscience/FotografÍa y conciencia is the first English-Spanish bilingual retrospective of the photographer’s career. It presents over one hundred striking images grouped into seven thematic suites, each briefly introduced by Moya. Distinguished historian Ariel Arnal provides an essay describing Moya’s impact as a documentary photographer, while Moya writes about his journey to become a photographer in the volume’s introduction, “El nacimiento de las imÁgenes/The Origin of the Images.” Including photographs that have never been published before, Rodrigo Moya adds an important new chapter to the history of twentieth-century Mexican photography.