The Mexico City Reader

Las Lomas II

Daniela Rossell had her first solo show in 1993, when she was barely twenty. It was held at Temístocles, Mexico City’s most lively alternative space, housed in a condemned mansion in the ritzy neighborhood of Polanco. She showed portraits of various female family members posing in the garish bedrooms, terraces, and gardens of their suburban mansions , located for the most part in Las Lomas, Mexico City’s answer to Beverly Hills. Rossell’s parents both came from families associated with the PRI— the political party that emerged from the Mexican Revolution, degenerated into what Octavio Paz once called a “philanthropic ogre,” and ruled the country from 1929 to 2000. Her photographs provide a fascinating glimpse into the private lives of the rich and powerful. Looking at these photographs, one is immediately struck by a certain gender imbalance: men are, for the most part, absent. We find traces of their existence—a silver-framed snapshot on a mahogany table, a painting dedicated to a certain Don Manuel, a stuffed-lion hunting trophy—but we soon realize that this is a world largely created and inhabited by women, the wives and daughters of mighty politicians 114 Las Lomas II   and opulent businessmen. This feminine realm is characterized, above all, by what appears to be a fierce compulsion to fill every square inch with gilded mirrors, blackamoor sconces, crystal chandeliers, baroque self-portraits, lace curtains, Persian rugs, silver tea sets, and countless other tchotchkes. In contrast to the exuberance of their surroundings, however, most of these women appear to be lacking something. They are not arrogant or haughty, snobbish or even wholly self-assured. On the contrary, it seems that they are suffering from an intense horror vacua, as if trying to fill an internal void through this compulsive accumulation of objects. Their wistful gazes betray a certain emptiness . . . is it loneliness? boredom ? existential angst? Inge, for example, a twenty-something aspiring model, appears in front of a pastel-colored, turret-filled mansion, posing next to a statue of Don Quixote. She seems completely unaware of the pathological excesses that surround her; ignorant of the fact that the family’s fortune might have less-than-respectable origins, that a hundred-thousandsquare -foot house might be an anomaly in a poor country. In another photo, Paulina Díaz Ordaz (a granddaughter of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, the president responsible for the 1968 student massacre, and a stepdaughter of Raúl Salinas de Gortari, the imprisoned brother of Mexico ’s ex-president) stands by a stuffed lion, a trophy from one of her stepfather’s hunting expeditions. Though most critics have read Rossell’s photographs as critiques of the ills afflicting Mexican society—political corruption, social inequity, racial disparity—it is perhaps more interesting to examine them within the context of Mexican photography. Since the 1920s, photography in Mexico has been dominated by a marked ethnographic tendency: photographers from Manuel Alvarez Bravo to Graciela Iturbide have turned an exoticizing eye toward the countryside, documenting the lifestyles of impoverished peasants in the remote hills of Chiapas or the deserts of Sonora. Ironically, these photographs have become prized commodities , adorning the living rooms of rich Mexicans like those depicted in this series. Rossell’s photographs use many of the same ethnographic strategies—she poses her subjects in their native environments and documents their daily habits and rituals. The difference, however, is that she focuses on those who until now had been excluded from the history of photography: the urban elite that is to blame for the sorry lot of the impoverished—but picturesque—rural masses. Las Lomas II 115 Daniela Rossell, Untitled [Christian Gorging], from the series “Rich and Famous” (1994–2001). Cibachrome print. 76 x 101.5 cm. Courtesy of the artist. Daniela Rossell, Untitled [Paulina Díaz Ordaz], from the series “Rich and Famous” (1994–2001). Cibachrome print. 76 x 101.5 cm. Courtesy of the artist. Daniela Rossell, Untitled [Inge], from the series “Rich and Famous” (1994–2001). Cibachrome print. 76 x 101.5 cm. Courtesy of the artist. Daniela Rossell, Untitled, from the series “Rich and Famous” (1994–2001). Cibachrome print. 76 x 101.5 cm. Courtesy of the artist. Daniela Rossell, Untitled [Itati Cantoral], from the series “Rich and Famous” (1994–2001). Cibachrome print. 76 x 101.5 cm. Courtesy of the artist. Daniela Rossell, Untitled...