Daniela Rossell: Ricas y Famosas: Mexico 1994-2001 | Daniela Rossell

Daniela Rossell: Ricas y Famosas: Mexico 1994-2001 | Daniela Rossell | Daniela provides a window into a world that is never seen...

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Daniela Rossell: R...

	Daniela Rossell: Ricas y Famosas: Mexico 1994-2001 Daniela Rossell Turner, 2002 - 176 pages average customer review:based on 14 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

See the super-rich in their vast kitsch palaces, modeling their latest designer wardrobes, showing off their art collections, petting their stuffed lions, posing on guilded, gleaming furniture, and tanning along the edges of lush indoor swimming pools. This is the private lifestyle of Mexican millionaires, and it is photographer Daniella Rossell's outrageous twist on what is historically understood as Mexican documentary photography. Rather than documenting the lifestyles of indigenous peoples, the urban poor, or exotic village scenes--as so many of her colleagues have done and continue to do--she has chosen to explore the habitat, customs, and traditions of the tiniest minority in Mexico: the ultra-rich.

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I have not read this book.

I found this news article today:

Earlier this year, 89 wives, daughters and lovers of wealthy or powerful
Mexican men posed chicly in extravagant settings with complete lack of
inhibition about their opulence, for photographer Daniela Rossell's
coffee-table book, "Ricas y Famosas" ("Rich and Famous"), thus appearing to
taunt the 53 percent of Mexicans who live in poverty. Rossell, who comes from
the upper class herself, and is thought to have made the book in part because
of conflicted views of her upbringing, has since received threats from the
embarrassed wealthy, who apparently miscalculated how their pictures would be
perceived. [The Observer (London), 9-15-02]

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Daniela provides a window into a world that is never seen...

Some have interpreted this book all wrong and some have seen it for all it is it worth. I actually was fortunate enought to attend Daniela's opening here in my home town and walked away praising these pieces of work up and down. She provides a window into a hushed yet lavish world that hardly anyone sees. This book is not about technique and lighting, weather she is using the correct apeture or f-stop, blah, blah, blah. She seems to be confronting issues that she had as a child with her surroundings-she is challangeing a social taboo by reviewing the upper class, and has done a amazing job! Starting out as snap shots of her family she eventually found her way into houses of people she didnt even know. I again give praise and do believe that these are works of art, and as a photographer myself I think she accomplished here what many strive for. Buy this book! You will not be let down.

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new approach to portraiture

Rossell's work is groundbreaking in its unflinching examination of the ultra-wealthy of Mexico. We are oddly attracted and repulsed by the women who inhabit the pictures. The images of excess and extravagance are sometimes beautiful, often comical and most certainly tragic. Yet, the faces of those women photographed reveal that they are not oblivious to their surroundings. They too seem to share this repulsion to their surroundings but their postures suggest resolution to their condition. The work is a fascinating new twist on portraiture - higly recommend.

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I guess it's the "latino" craze

If you are looking for quality photographs, do not purchase this book. There are very few images in Ricas y Famosas that work well. Most are mediocre and there are several that are just terrible. Was she trying to go for the snap-shot aesthetic? Or was she trying to achieve a well-lit, premeditated,maybe more traditional image? You just can't tell. My belief is that she is simply a bad photographer with very bad technique. The body of work that she presents here is not well thought out at all.
On the other hand, the subject matter is interesting. Nobody in Mexico had ever taken on the subject that she chose, so you have to give her credit for that. But, I was very disappointed by most of the images (almost all of them). I think she could've done a much better job and I don't understand why Ricas and Famosas has gotten such good reviews. I guess it's mostly because of its shock value, the appeal of kitsch, and the mexican craze that's hit the art world and the cinema world. Bottom line- the pictures are mediocre bordering on terrible (with the excpetion of a few), but her subject is very interesting.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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