Wijnanda Deroo: Mexico 1994: The Cibachromes

Wijnanda Deroo: Mexico 1994: The Cibachromes
Oct 8, 2026 – Nov 21, 2026

United States United States — Photography Gallery
526 W 26th St Room 411
New York, NY 10001

Deborah Bell Photographs in New York presents Wijnanda Deroo: Mexico 1994: The Cibachromes, on view from 8 October through 21 November 2026, the photographer's third exhibition with the gallery. The show features vintage color prints made in 1994 during Deroo's travels in Mexico, capturing a pivotal moment in her career as she transitioned from black-and-white to color photography.

Deroo is well known for her meticulously composed photographs of interiors, in which people are usually absent. Her earlier series from the 1980s through early 2000s—including Amsterdam Hotels, Artists' Studios, Atlantic City, Brooklyn Night, Curaçao, Disappearing Houses, Lower East Side, Mobile Homes, and New York Eateries—acknowledge human presence without showing a single person. She continued this approach in more recent bodies of work, Behind the Walls of the Hermitage (2018-2019) and Out on the Street: The Dining Sheds & Empty Streets of New York (2020-2024), made during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Believing that the greatest visual mysteries and adventures are found in "what is," Deroo photographs human-made spaces and the objects within them exactly as she finds them in existing light, without external intervention, rearrangement, or other adjustments. This leaves all details untouched, with all the historical layers visible. Her work centers on visual encounters with surprise, stillness, tension, and emotional or psychological states of being, allowing what is already there to speak its own unique, intriguing language.

In Mexico, the absence of people gave way to intriguing clusters of objects, with brilliant colors, texture, and the way light moved in and around environments revealing the unique vibration of the place. The Cibachrome process, a dye destruction method known for its vivid saturation and archival stability, suited Deroo's eye for the exuberant colors and color combinations that characterize her color work. Because her visit came on the cusp of this transition, a selection of large vintage gelatin silver prints of photographs made in black-and-white on the same trip will also be available for private viewing during the exhibition.

Wijnanda Deroo was born in the Netherlands in 1955 and received a liberal arts degree from the Academy of Fine Arts in Arnhem, where she later became a professor. In 1989, she was awarded an artist's residency at MoMA P.S. 1 in Long Island City, New York, and she continues to live and work in New York. Her photographs have been exhibited internationally since the early 1980s and are held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Bibliothèque Nationale, the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Rijksmuseum, the Stedelijk Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and many other public institutions worldwide.

Image: Wijnanda Deroo (Dutch, b. 1955) Mérida, Mexico, 1994 © Wijnanda Deroo


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