Photography at the Museo Moderno de Buenos Aires: Alberto Goldenstein and Zanele Muholi

The exhibition curated by Carla Barbero displays a set of more than 300 photographs created between 1982 and 2018 by Alberto Goldenstein, who contributed his work to the renewal of photography within the contemporary visual arts of Argentina. The tour includes a selection of its most recognized series, as well as unpublished material.

In a first room, a group of black and white photographs reveal the beginnings of his career in the 80s when he travels to Boston, United States. Images of the urban landscape, of public sculpture, of his colleagues, of those things that the artist sees mark the attitude of Goldenstein towards photography from here and throughout his career. "I am a photographer of visions, not of themes," he says.

In a second room we find a projection of a group of images entitled "The world of art". Here we see pass casual photographs that portray characters from the contemporary art scene of the '90s in different everyday situations. Oscar Bony, Jorge Gumier Maier, Ruth Benzacar and Marcelo Pombo are just a few of the captured. With this group of works he is interested in marking the remarkable differences between photographing and especially being photographed in those years and in the present.

In the series "Mar del Plata" of 2001 that is seen below, a photographic essay reveals metaphors of Argentina through scenes from the legendary spa. In the center of the room and on tables-a curatorial decision whose intention is to replicate how the artist sees his photographs-are captured this time from the city of Buenos Aires grouped under the name "Flaneur" (2004). At his side on a lower table surrounded by armchairs is the latest production of Goldenstein in magazine format: the pages show short shots mostly of subjects and works of art in the last art fairs of the city of Miami. In contrast to the urban landscape that predominates in this room, larger works with pure nature are grouped on the left wall.

Finally, a series of recent works (2011-2017) with photographs of European and North American metropolises where again the public sculpture in situation, the typogriffs of the posters and the life of the city in Cotifdian dialogue with the first productions of the artist.

In Zanele Muholi's exhibition in the Special Projects Room, a selection of works from his photographic project Somnyama Ngonyama [Salve, dark lioness!], Which began in 2012 and continues in process, is on display. It is a series of self-portraits made in different cities of the world, in which their own history is exposed -the negritude, the political history of their country, the condition of gender-. Each image of Somnyama Ngonyama is a manifesto of resistance that claims to be invisible to those who have been stripped of it, as well as a statement about human and gender rights, and about the importance of memory in the construction of the future. As the curatorial text of the exhibition reads: "The result compromises the viewer's view that, faced with the works of Muholi, he is forced to ask himself about the how, when, where and why of the construction of these images".