Christina De Middel

Combining documentary and conceptual techniques, the work of Magnum photographer Cristina de Middel (born 1975) is driven by narrative. Her projects have often begun from reconstructed stories or symbolic universes that made it possible to bring order to the chaos of the world. Now, de Middel’s newest photobook turns the narrative axis on its head. Through a selection of more than 250 photographs, Apoteosis Now suspends chronology and plot, resisting the urge to explain or discourse. Whether of stacks of pizza crusts, a child on a horse or a curtain softly blowing before an open window, these images are autonomous, existing in and of themselves. Because they are stripped of sequence, they also reshape the rhythm of reading. They invite the viewer to linger a little longer than usual before each image, to grant it a kind of attention we rarely allow today.

Cristina de Middel (born 1975), the first Spanish head of Magnum Photos, has been traveling for years with Mexican migrants on the train they call “the beast”: interviewing sicarios (hired killers) and talking for hours with "coyotes" (clandestine smugglers) and police officers. She combines her own photographs with objects found in the desert and archival footage, creating a multi-layered narrative that evokes the hardships and dangers of searching for a better life. The journey begins in Tapachula, a city on the southern border of Mexico with Guatemala, and ends in Felicity, a small town in California dubbed the “Center of the World.” This saga is punctuated by the accounts of three migrants recounting their crossing, as well as a commentary by the artist. An afterword by Mexican journalist Pedro Anza illuminates the issues at stake and the human consequences of the United States’ obsession with closing its borders.

This latest project by the acclaimed Spanish photographer Cristina de Middel (born 1975) reflects on the complexities of masculinity in India through relationships between man, machine and work—specifically through the story of Doctor Ashok Aswani, who started the world's largest Charlie Chaplin festival.

Mexican-based, Spanish-born documentary photographer Christina de Middel (born 1975) offers 200 drawings of different archival news magazine photographs accompanied by lyrics of Mexican ranchera songs. A pastiche of forms, Cucurrucucú invites us to reexamine the violence concealed beneath accepted codes, whether in photojournalism or folk music.