Flor Garduño

Flor Garduño (born 1957) is a Mexican photographer. Garduño is known for her black-and-white portraits of a diverse range of subjects, including indigenous people and cultures, street photography, and still lifes.

Early life In 1979, Garduño became an assistant to the Mexican photographer Manuel Álvarez Bravo, printing his portfolios in the darkroom for two years. This project was supported by the Instituto Nacional Indigenista.

Garduño's work has been exhibited in numerous museums such as the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico, New York and Chicago, as well as other museums in America and Europe. She has published four books: Magia del juego eterno (Magic of the Eternal Game) (1985), Bestiarium (1987), Testigos del tiempo (1992), and Mesteños (1994).

In 1982, Garduňo had her first solo exhibition in Mexico City, at the José Clemente Orozco Gallery. A year later, her work was presented in the exhibition Four From Mexico at the Mexican Museum in San Francisco, California.

The Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego presented Garduño's earlier work categorized into three groups, called Trilogy: "Bestiarium", "Fantastic Women", and "Silent Natures" and includes 96 photographs taken in Mexico, Poland, and Switzerland.

Concepción Bados-Ciria describes Garduño's work as emphasizing lyrical aspects of the Indians of Mesoamerica. Bados-Ciria states that the use of nudity in Garduño's work does not abandon the interior and the consciousness, but it rather praises the multiple and various bodies to challenge the dominant binary opposition body/spirit and, at the same time, she remaps a material which is cultural, historical, anthropological, sexual and racial. Bados-Ciria also mentions that Garduño's work focuses on Mexican themes, such as her photo series, "Testigos del tiempo" which has 72 photos in Latin American countries in a four-year period. The countries she traveled to during this period include Guatemala, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Mexico. While she visited, she stayed in homes of her subjects, sharing her photographs with them and sharing her experience. some interesting facts about her is She gave up her studies to work as a darkroom assistant for Manuel Álvarez Bravo, one of Mexico's most prestigious photographers, with whom she strengthened her photographic skills. Since then, Garduño has received numerable prizes, and her work has been exposed and published around the world.