A Century of Abstraction in Mexican Photography at Throckmorton Fine Art traces a long arc in which Mexican photographers used abstraction not as an escape from place, but as a way of seeing it more sharply. On view from July 16 to September 26, 2026, the exhibition brings together more than 40 works made between 1924 and 2013, linking early modern experiments to later, more expansive approaches to form, light and landscape.
The show includes major figures such as Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Flor Garduño and Graciela Iturbide, along with expatriates Tina Modotti and Edward Weston, whose time in Mexico helped shape a broader international language for modern photography. Their work reveals a tension that runs through the exhibition: abstraction here is not detached from the world, but rooted in it. Cacti, rocks, flowers, hands, birds and power lines recur across the images, transformed into formal patterns without losing their ties to a recognizable Mexican terrain.
That balance matters because Mexican photography has often been discussed through the lens of national identity. This exhibition offers a different reading. It shows photographers working against fixed categories, using geometry, shadow, motion and partial visibility to open their images outward. In that sense, the pictures participate in a larger modern conversation while remaining deeply attentive to time and place. A desert plant can become an almost architectural shape; a bird in flight can read as a line drawn across the frame.
Curated by Benjamin Genocchio, the exhibition also points to a paradox at the center of 20th-century Mexican abstraction: the more formal the image becomes, the more it seems to carry the imprint of its setting. The result is a survey that feels precise without being narrow. It treats abstraction not as a retreat from reality, but as one of the clearest ways photographers have found to describe it.
A Century of Abstraction in Mexican Photography presents that history with range and confidence, showing how closely visual invention and cultural place remain connected.
Image: Graciela Iturbide, Birds | Pajaros, Dolores Hidalgo Guanajuato, 1978., Gelatin silver print, 36.2 x 36.2 cm © Graciela Iturbide - Courtesy Throckmorton Fine Art
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