FLOR GARDUÑO
Flor Garduño was born in Mexico City in 1957, and grew up on a farm outside the city. At age 18 she attended the San Carlos School of Fine Arts in Mexico City where she met and studied with photographer Kati Horna, one of her greatest influences. She was also mentored by Mariana Yampolsky and Manuel Álvarez Bravo, working for two years as Bravo's assistant and then for another two years at the Ministry of Education on photographic assignments under Yampolsky. Garduño quickly found her own independence and vision when she made numerous trips to remote parts of Latin America in the 1980s to photograph the lives and rituals of indigenous people. Her book of this work, Witnesses of Time (1992), was published in six editions and became an international success with exhibitions of the photographs traveling to major museums around the world. In 1995, Garduño gave birth to her second child, an event which made her decide to change how she made photography. Setting up a homemade studio in a small adobe shed next to her house in Tepoztlán, she proceeded to "return to the beginning," concentrating on still lifes and female nudes. She photographed her women friends, encouraging them to choose their own poses. Flor Garduño: Inner Light - Still Lifes and Nudes, (Bulfinch) was published in 2002. Her most recent monograph is Silent Nature (Gabrielle Capelli, 2006). Garduño, her husband, and their two children divide their time between Stabio, Switzerland and Tepoztlán, Mexico.
SOURCE Focus: Five Women Photographers by Sylvia Wolf (Whtiman, 1994);
Flor Garduño http://www.florgarduno.com/
PHOTO www.florgarduno.com