Now in Progress, the First Comprehensive Exhibition of Argentine Photography in the US

Fabian Leyva-Barragan verifies the measurements of a vintage Life magazine featuring former first lady of Argentina Eva Perón.

Fabian Leyva-Barragan, curatorial assistant in the Getty Museum’s Department of Photographs, is collecting, verifying, and finalizing information on more than 300 art objects and loans from North and South America in preparation for an upcoming exhibition and accompanying publication Photography in Argentina, 1850–2010: Contradiction and Continuity.

Fabian, a native Spanish speaker, has a background in contemporary Latin American art and new media and has been working for over a year to secure loans from prominent Argentine institutions and collectors to be featured in the exhibition. He joins curators Idurre Alonso and Judith Keller, who have played a major role advocating for awareness of, and scholarship on, Argentine photography over the past three years.

While not a survey, this will be the most comprehensive exhibition of Argentine photography yet mounted in the United States. It includes 300 works by more than 60 artists spanning over 150 years and focuses on themes including depictions of Argentina’s national iconographic myths (the gaucho, indigenous people, Evita, and Buenos Aires), conceptual photography, and the post-2001 governmental crisis. This is likely the first time that these topics in Argentine photography have been extensively researched in United States—making the exhibition catalogue a key contribution to scholarship. Scholars may be surprised, Fabian notes, by the parallels and connections between the social histories of Argentina and United States.

The exhibition opens September 16, 2017, as part of the Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA and will be traveling to Fundación Proa in Buenos Aires in March 2018. The catalogue is available from Getty Publications starting this fall.