The exhibition Zoe Leonard : Al rio /To The River has recently opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art.
The Rio Grande collection of photos has been exhibited in Luxembourg and Paris and this is its third iteration. There s also a plan to show this exhibition in Mexico City.
The river in question is called the Rio Grande on the Mexican side and is called the Rio Bravo on the United States side. The river is one of a handful of waterways that defines an international border.
Zoe Leonard began photographing the river in 2016 and only completed the work in 2021.
Over these five years Leonard photographed the 2000 kilometre portion of the river where the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo divides the border cities of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico and El Paso all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.
The exhibition itself is set out so as to mimic the winding nature of the Rio Grande. The exhibition consists of over 500 black and white silver gelation prints presented as a flow of passages that are both temporal and geographically symbolic.
The analogue processing of the prints reveals a greater tonality and perhaps greater detail than if it had been processed digitally.
The work has three main themes called the Prologue, the main Body of the work and the Epilogue.
The Prologue consists of prints of the ripples of the river that have been photographed in colour but the river is so silted up that the prints appear monochromatic.
The Body of the Work moves out from the previous perspective and shows where the river flows unimpeded through hills and valleys to where it has obstacles placed in its way along the foreshore to prevent border crossings.
Amidst of all these black and white, often depressing photos, Zoe Leonard decided to give the viewer some relief by adding a splash of colour comprising of desert flowers.
The Epilogue is also shot in muted colours where people seem to be going along on their daily activities unaware of the impact of the river.
Zoe Leonard will be in the country for another month presenting a number of talks at the MCA.
For further details go to www.mca.com.au
Featured image : New York photographer Zoe Leonard
Text and photos by Ben Apfelbaum
