Mexico in Focus: The Photographers Who Captured a Century
Updated: Sep 19
Los Angeles, CA.- Photography has a way of preserving more than a moment. It can capture a feeling, document a turning point, reveal a culture and, sometimes, tell a story that words cannot fully explain.
This fall, the J. Paul Getty Museum invites audiences to experience nearly a century of Mexican visual history through “Instante/revelación: Moments in Mexican Photography,” an exhibition on view from September 1, 2026, through January 3, 2027. Bringing together works by 13 influential photographers, the exhibition explores the relationships, collaborations and cultural exchanges that helped shape Mexican photography from the late 1920s through the mid-2010s.
Rather than presenting Mexican photography as a collection of individual artistic voices, “Instante/revelación” looks at the connections between them. Photographers worked alongside writers, painters, filmmakers, anthropologists and one another, creating a rich creative network that influenced how Mexico was documented and understood.
At the center of the exhibition is the idea that a photograph can reveal something far beyond what initially appears in the frame.
A Visual Conversation Across Generations
The exhibition takes its name from the 1982 book Instante y revelación, which brought together the poetry of Nobel Prize-winning writer Octavio Paz and photographs by Manuel Álvarez Bravo. Paz's reflections on Álvarez Bravo's work provide the conceptual foundation for the exhibition, which is organized into five sections inspired by lines from his poem Cara al tiempo, or “Facing Time.”
Together, the sections create a lyrical journey through Mexican photography, moving between intimate portraits, everyday scenes, abstract compositions and images shaped by Mexico's changing social and political landscape.
Featured photographers include Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Lola Álvarez Bravo, Manuel Carrillo, Antonio Reynoso, Héctor García, Mariana Yampolsky, Rodrigo Moya, Pedro Meyer, Graciela Iturbide, Yolanda Andrade, Pablo Ortiz Monasterio, Cecilia Salcedo Méndez and Flor Garduño.
Their work spans generations, styles and perspectives, but recurring ideas connect them.
Identity, memory, everyday life, politics, culture and the passage of time appear throughout the exhibition.
Identical and Different
The first section, Lo idéntico y lo diferente, or “Identical and Different,” examines the personal relationships behind the photographs.
Friends, teachers, students and partners often influenced one another while developing their own artistic identities. By placing photographs side by side, the exhibition reveals similarities in subject matter and perspective while highlighting the differences that made each photographer's work distinct.
It is a reminder that artistic history is rarely created in isolation. Sometimes the most important creative influences happen through friendships, conversations and shared experiences.
Finding Beauty in the Ordinary
In La sensación y la percepción, or “Sensation and Perception,” the exhibition shifts toward the visual experience of photography itself.
Beginning with Manuel Álvarez Bravo's work from the late 1920s, this section explores how photographers can transform ordinary objects and familiar scenes simply by changing the way they are photographed.
Cropping, unusual angles, light, texture and perspective become tools for creating something unexpected. Works by Graciela Iturbide, Pedro Meyer, Cecilia Salcedo Méndez and Lola Álvarez Bravo encourage viewers to look closer at things they might otherwise overlook.
A familiar object can become abstract. A simple shadow can become the focus. An everyday scene can suddenly feel mysterious.
When a Moment Becomes a Revelation
Lente de revelaciones, or “Lens of Revelations,” continues this exploration by focusing on photographs that turn ordinary moments into poetic experiences.
By removing context or carefully controlling what appears within the frame, photographers create images that leave room for interpretation. Instead of giving viewers every answer, the photographs encourage them to wonder what happened before or after the shutter clicked.
This approach can be seen throughout the work of Manuel and Lola Álvarez Bravo, Graciela Iturbide, Flor Garduño and Yolanda Andrade.
The section also recognizes the important role of publications such as Imagen, El Maestro Rural and Mexican Art and Life, which helped bring Mexican photography to wider audiences and created new spaces for photographic storytelling.
The Artists Behind the Lens
One of the most compelling elements of “Instante/revelación” is its exploration of photography's relationship with other art forms.
In El ojo piensa, el pensamiento ve, or “The Eye Thinks, Thought Sees,” photography becomes part of a much larger creative conversation.
The exhibition highlights relationships between photographers and major Mexican cultural figures including Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Rufino Tamayo, Octavio Paz and Juan Rulfo.
Photographs by Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Lola Álvarez Bravo, Rodrigo Moya and Héctor García reveal the cultural circles in which these artists worked. Graciela Iturbide's photographs from inside Frida Kahlo's bathroom offer another intimate example of photography's ability to preserve spaces connected to Mexico's artistic history.
Here, the camera is not simply documenting art. It is documenting the people, places and relationships that helped create it.
A Century Marked by Change
The final section, El tiempo no cesa de fluir, or “Time Never Stops Flowing,” brings the exhibition's themes together through photographs that respond to Mexico's changing social, political and economic realities.
Spanning from the 1930s to 2016, the photographs document a country experiencing profound transformation.
The images move through different periods of Mexican history, including the so-called “Mexican Miracle” of the mid-20th century and the 2014 disappearance of 43 students in Ayotzinapa. Photographers including Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Lola Álvarez Bravo, Mariana Yampolsky, Héctor García, Rodrigo Moya, Graciela Iturbide and Pablo Ortiz Monasterio capture moments that reveal both the everyday realities of Mexican life and the larger forces shaping the country.
The result is more than a photographic timeline. It is a visual record of memory.
Photography as Cultural Memory
What makes “Instante/revelación” particularly powerful is the way it positions photography as both art and historical evidence.
Across nearly 100 years, these photographers captured people, places and experiences that might otherwise exist only in memory. Their photographs preserve not only what Mexico looked like, but how different generations experienced and interpreted their surroundings.
Julieta Pestarino, assistant curator in the Department of Photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum and curator of the exhibition, describes the photographs as “instants” that reveal the many ways Mexico can be seen.
That idea is at the heart of the exhibition. There is no single image of Mexico, just as there is no single way to understand its history.
Instead, there are countless perspectives, moments and memories.
From Mexico City to Los Angeles
“Instante/revelación” will also be presented alongside “Every Minute Is History: Five Views of Los Angeles,” an exhibition focused on five photographers whose work expanded representations of Chicano and Chicana communities in Los Angeles during the second half of the 20th century.
The connection between the two exhibitions creates an even broader conversation about photography, identity, migration, community and cultural memory across Mexico and Los Angeles.
To mark the opening of “Instante/revelación,” the Getty will host a panel discussion on Tuesday, September 1, at 7 p.m. Moderated by Elizabeth Ferrer, the conversation will feature contemporary photographers George Rodriguez, Pablo Ortiz Monasterio, Reynaldo Rivera and Yolanda Andrade, who will discuss the opportunities and challenges of working between Los Angeles and Mexico City.
Spanish-language guided tours will also be offered monthly throughout the exhibition.
A Collection Built Through Generosity
Every photograph featured in “Instante/revelación” comes from donations made to the J. Paul Getty Museum by collectors Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser.
Over the past 25 years, their contributions have significantly expanded the Getty's collection of Mexican photography, giving audiences greater access to important works and helping establish the foundation for this exhibition.
The exhibition will also be accompanied by a bilingual catalogue from Getty Publications featuring reproductions of the works on view, essays, section texts and artist biographies.
More Than a Photograph
“Instante/revelación” ultimately asks viewers to reconsider what happens when we stop looking at a photograph as simply a captured moment.
A photograph can be a historical document. It can be a collaboration. It can be a memory. It can be a political statement. It can be a portrait of a person, a country or an era.
And sometimes, it can reveal an entire cultural history in a single frame.
With works spanning nearly a century and bringing together artists connected through friendship, mentorship, collaboration and shared cultural experiences, “Instante/revelación: Moments in Mexican Photography” offers an intimate look at the evolution of Mexican photography and the people who helped shape it.
For anyone interested in photography, Mexican culture, art history or the ways visual storytelling preserves collective memory, this exhibition offers an opportunity to look at Mexico through many different lenses and, perhaps, discover something new in the process.
“Instante/revelación: Moments in Mexican Photography” will be on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum from September 1, 2026, through January 3, 2027.
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