Latin American and Latino artists have used photography to engage with modern media landscapes and critique globalized economies since the 1960s. But rarely are these artists considered leaders in discussions about the theory and scholarship of photography or included in conversations about the radical transformations of photography in the digital era. The Matter of Photography in the Americas presents the work of more than eighty artists working in Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America, South America, and Latino communities in the United States who all have played key roles in transforming the medium and critiquing its uses. Artists like Alfredo Jaar, Oscar Munoz, Ana Mendieta, and Teresa Margolles highlight photography's ability to move beyond the impulse simply to document the world at large. Instead, their work questions the relationship between representation and visibility. With nearly 200 full-color images, this book brings together drawings, prints, installations, photocopies, and three-dimensional objects in an investigation and critique of the development and artistic function of photography. Essays on key works and artists shed new light on the ways photographs are made and consumed. Pressing at the boundaries of what defines culturally specific, photography-centric artwork, this book looks at how artists from across the Americas work with and through photography as a critical tool.

An accessible and in-depth study of Frida Kahlo, one of the most beloved artists in MoMA’s collection .

Though the Surrealists adopted Frida Kahlo as one of their own, the painter maintained that she did ‘not know if my paintings are Surrealist or not, but I do know that they are the most frank expression of myself.’ She produced numerous self-portraits, each one an articulation of different facets of herself and her eventful life. Kahlo painted Self- Portrait with Cropped Hair in the wake of a particularly tumultuous time, just months after she divorced her famous husband, Mexican Muralist painter Diego Rivera. He had always admired her long, dark hair, which, as she indicates in the tresses littering the painting, she had cut off after their split. She also shows herself in an oversized suit resembling the ones that Rivera wore. Through such emotionally and symbolically charged details, Kahlo expresses her feelings about her relationship with Rivera while also asserting her sense of self as an independent artist