Flor Garduñ O: Inner Light, Still Lifes and Nudes

In her follow up to the travel diary Witnesses of Time, Mexican photographer Garduno veers away from architecture and landscape to explore the female nude and the still life. The one-time assistant to Manuel Alvarez Bravo does not, however, forsake her signature magic realism in this new terrain. Echoing Bravo and Tina Modotti, Garduno evokes ancient myths and indigenous rituals with a surrealist touch. She celebrates all her subjects-monumental leaves, rough-hewn stone, gleaming crows, dead fish, sphinx-like children, and supple pomegranates-with the sensuous play of light and shadow, but it is the female body, -its planes and curves, that Garduno consecrates with sumptuous luminosity. Although not a groundbreaking collection, the series affirms the artist's contribution to the wide scope of Latin American photography. An uneven introduction by poet Veronica Volkow probes themes of fertility and death; Garduno's enigmatic images speak eloquently of such mysteries all by themselves. 62 tritone photos.