Self-taught camerawoman’s premiere UK exhibition.
The first UK major exhibition dedicated to Chilean photographer Paz Errazuriz, is being shown by a Milton Keynes gallery.
MK Gallery in the theatre district is exhibiting one of Latin America’s most important documentary photographers until the end of summer. Errazuriz has built a vast display of uncompromising work that challenges social norms and political orthodoxies.
This landmark exhibition at the Midsummer Boulevard gallery features 171 photographs, providing visitors with a unique insight into Chilean society that was going through a historical era of huge change.
The expo, called ‘Dare to look’, includes many of the photographer’s landmark series, including La Manzana de Adán (Adam’s Apple), which portrays the lives of Chilean lesbian, gay and bisexual people, sex workers in the 1980s, and Antesala de un Desndo (Antechamber of a Nude), a haunting series that captures the conditions of psychiatric patients in long-term care.
The self-taught photographer trained as a teacher but had to leave her job following General Pinochet’s takeover of Chile. That was when she decided to ‘pick up a camera’.
“I am impressed and honoured to be in this gallery,” said Errazuriz, who has travelled to Milton Keynes to see her exhibition in person, organised by curator Victoria del Val Hernandez.
“My story really starts in the late 1970s. I wanted to pick up a camera so badly. I had always felt like a photographer. The dictatorship pushed me to become a photographer even though I didn’t really know anything.
“I’m self-taught so for example, when I looked at older people I thought ‘how is it to be old?’ because one day I will be old too.”
“We are thrilled to be working with Paz Errazuriz on this survey of her extraordinary career,” said Anthony Spira, director of MK Gallery. “With its focus on communities whose voices are rarely heard, the artists’ work engages with pressing social circumstances that have never been more resonant than today, when the world is as crazy as it is.”
Paz Errazuriz: Dare to look is at MK Gallery from Saturday 19th July until Sunday 5th October.
