Craftswoman. Mitla. Mexico. Circa 1954.

Vintage gelatin silver photograph, with white margin. Measurements: 24.3 x 20.3 cm / 9.56 x 8 in. Work in good condition.

Here we see the play of light and shadow in the intimacy of the work of a young artisan. Lost in thought, she lets the photographer masterfully portray her as she knots the fringes of an already woven garment. In the intimacy of her work, the photographer invites us to place our gaze on the young woman's hands and face, a motive of recurring interest in Kolko's work. The one portrayed is “a Zapotec woman from the community of Mitla, Oaxaca, located in the Valley of Oaxaca, is finishing a woven wool textile with warp-carved designs. The stitching work consists of taking the fringes from the ends and making knots and loops. It is difficult to know if she was woven on a backstrap loom or a pedal loom. Her clothing is an industrial dress and apron”. (1)

Attentive to her project of documenting Mexican women, we take a judgment from J. A. Rodríguez, which seems to have been written for this image. On occasions Bernice Kolko “made a record where she exalted the figure of women in permanent industry; everyday spaces where female repose still acquired dynamism from the photographer's vision (closed shots towards these spaces that barely reveal the exact context), the woman as a reverential icon of the image”. It is Rodríguez himself who remembers that Kolko had already dabbled in photo-documentaryism in New York and Los Angeles. (2)

Notes:

1. Information provided by the Mexican specialist Marta Turok.

2. José Antonio Rodríguez: Bernice Kolko photographer. Mexico, Ediciones del Equilibrista, 1996, p. 29.

BERNICE KOLKO

Born in Grayevo, Poland, Bernice Kolko (1905 - 1970), she and her family emigrated to the United States in 1920. In 1932 she returned to Europe and briefly studied photography under Rudolf Koppitz in Vienna. After the rise of the Nazis in Germany, she returns to the United States, where she establishes herself as a photographer, first in New York and then in Los Angeles. Around 1944, during World War II, she enlisted in the military to serve as a photographer. Later -and until her trip to Mexico in 1951- she opened her photography to experimental practice.

Although she comes to Mexico as a tourist, the good reception that her work has encourages her to stay and live there. It is the critic Antonio Rodríguez who begins to write about her work in various newspapers. Along with another text by Elena Poniatowska, a text by Rodríguez accompanies the publication of the monographic issue of Artes de México dedicated to Kolko's “Mujeres de México”, a series that was exhibited in 1955 in a major exhibition at the Palacio de Bellas Artes de Mexico and also, in Canada.

As for an exclusive book of this project, she never edited it, but many of her records were part of two of his first titles: "Rostros de México", published by UNAM in 1966 and "Semblantes mexicanos", from 1968. the one that accompanied an exhibition that toured the country.

We present her here with two vintage photographs of Mexican women, both dated to 1954.

Note:

1. José Antonio Rodríguez: Bernice Kolko photographer. Mexico, Ediciones del Equilibrista, 1996, p. 27.

We are grateful for the biography provided by the Mexican specialist, Dr. Laura González Flores, dedicated to teaching, curating, criticism and theory of photography.