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The Recoletos Hall at the Mapfre Foundation is hosting an exhibition from 11 February to 7 May that reviews forty years of Facundo de Zuviría’s career, from 1982 to 2022, through 195 black and white and colour photographs.  The exhibition offers a linear itinerary and includes his best known and political series, Siesta Argentina, a major example of his inclination for composition and symmetry.

Curated by Alexis Fabry, this exhibition showcases the photographer’s two ways of working.  On one hand, projects that are ongoing in time and created from a prior idea in which each image follows this original concept, as occurred in Frontalismo. This series, which began in 2010, was initially a series with an end point, but it is still ongoing.

The same occurs in Estampas Porteñas, which Facundo de Zuviría considers to be his most personal work as it is made up of places to which he returns over and over again on his regular strolls through Buenos Aires.  On the other hand, the exhibition addresses an autonomous series, such as the photograms (1981-1983), the sequences (2000-2004), Siesta Argentina (2001-2003) or the blueprints of books that he prepared during the pandemic (2020-2021), among others.

Facundo de Zuviría (born Buenos Aires 1954), photographing his native city is a way of life.  In 1983, he decided to devote himself to photography and following his participation in a culture programme in its neighbourhoods, he created a visual archive of images of Buenos Aires.  The project was never realised but since then he has captured life on the streets with all of the elements that make up the urban environment.

In this way, and over the past forty years, Zuviría has constructed a parallel image of his city, an image that was initially aseptic but one that is both evocative and nostalgic.

Image Credits:

• Facundo de Zuviría. Peinados Permanentes Rosita, Monserrat, 1985 Private collection, Paris © Facundo de Zuviría
• Tabaré, Bartolomé Mitre al 1500, Buenos Aires, 1985 Private collection, Paris
• Elvira, San Telmo, 1984. Artist’s collection, courtesy of Toluca Fine Art