The acclaimed photographer of African masks turns her lens to the astounding mask cultures of Mexico
Since 1985, photographer Phyllis Galembo has traveled extensively to photograph sites of ritual dress in Africa and the Caribbean. In her latest body of work, collected in this new publication, Galembo turns to Mexico, where she captures cultural performances with a subterranean political edge. Using a direct, unaffected portrait style, Galembo captures her subjects informally posed but often strikingly attired in traditional or ritualistic dress.
Masking is a complex tradition in which the participants transcend the physical world and enter the spiritual realm. Masks, costumes and body paint transform the human body and encode a rich range of political, artistic, theatrical, social and religious meanings on the body. In her vibrant color photographs, Galembo highlights the artistry of the performers, how they use materials from their immediate environment to morph into a fantastical representation of themselves and an idealized vision of a mythical figure. In a gorgeous, fascinating photographic survey of Mexico’s masking practices, Galembo captures her subjects suspended between past, present and future, with their religious, political and cultural affiliations—their personal and collective identifications—displayed on their bodies.
Photographer Phyllis Galembo (born 1952) received her MFA from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1977, and was Professor in the Fine Arts Department of SUNY Albany from 1978 to 2018. A 2014 Guggenheim Fellow, Galembo has photographs in numerous public and private collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New York Public Library. Her photographs of ritual masks in Africa, the Diaspora and beyond have been the subject of several monographic publications, including Maske (Aperture, 2016).
Featured image is reproduced from 'Phyllis Galembo: Mexico Masks Rituals.'
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Musee
Mariah McCloskey
Delving into the ritualistic aspects of the native Mestizo, Galembo helps to retrieve a deeper appreciation for the transculturation of the natives.
Guardian
In her vibrant colour photographs, Galembo highlights the artistry of the performers, how they use materials from their immediate environment to morph into a fantastical representation of themselves and an idealised vision of a mythical figure.
AnOther
Belle Hutton
Mexico, Masks & Rituals, a book that compiles ten year’s worth of her captivating photography in the country.
Huck
Miss Rosen
In her new book Mexico Masks Rituals, Phyllis Galembo photographs the captivating art made exclusively for ritual.
Creative Boom
Katy Cowan
Brought together in a new book, Phyllis Galembo: Mexico, Masks & Rituals, the fascinating survey captures cultural performances with a subterranean political edge.
Vogue
Chioma Nnadi
...Galembo’s images offer an awe-inspiring counterpoint, a rare bridge onto a culture in which creativity and self-expression are close to the divine.
Library Journal
Micahel Dashkin
Students of ethnography, dance, and even costume design or fashion will value this title. The intensely colorful images, aided by the attractive graphic design, will captivate photography enthusiasts.
Plain Magazine
Kala Barba-Court
Mexico Masks & Rituals features the country’s cultural performances tinged with a subterranean political edge in the form of intricately detailed, colorful masks and costumes.
Tatler
Francesca Carington
Galembo’s book is a riot of colour – celebrating the individuality, creativity and craftsmanship that goes into these masks and costumes. Organised by festival, each collection of photographs is prefaced with text explaining the customs and figures that appear in each ritual. Bright, theatrical, uncanny at times, but full of life, it’s a fascinating, beautiful study.
Square Magazine
In a gorgeous, fascinating photographic survey of Mexico’s masking practices, Galembo captures her subjects suspended between past, present and future, with their religious, political and cultural affiliations—their personal and collective identifications—displayed on their bodies.
NPR
Cathy Newman
Mexico Masks/Rituals restores the mask — and the political, cultural, religious and social messages it can telegraph — from tourist commodity to its role as an artifact of ritual and celebration.
In the In-Between
Roula Seikaly
Mexico, Masks | Rituals – advances the artist’s passion in a concentrated study of celebrations that blend colonialist and indigenous socio-religious practices in Mexico.
Wonderland: Boston
Greg Cook
Mexico: Masks | Rituals offers vivid portraits of people costumed as Easter Wise Men and shepherds, as jaguars and foxes and tigers, as demons, as skeleton women in elaborate gowns, as indigenous peoples resisting Spanish colonists. [...] Dazzling masks of contemporary Mexican festivals.
L'Officiel
Joseph Akel
Mexico Mask Rituals amounts to a rich survey of a nation’s cultural and religious practices, highlighting performative ceremonial rites that have adapted to the present while celebrating the past.
Something Curated
[Mexico Masks Rituals] illuminates the transformative power of costume and ritual.
Photograph
Lyle Rexer
As societies change and practices disappear or are transformed, [Galembo's] portraits not only retain the details of cultural production, they also serve as a continuing celebration of creativity and a reminder of the value of human diversity.
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For anyone looking to get away from this season's out-of-the-box vampires, ghosts, skeletons and witches, old school DIY Halloween and Day of the Dead inspiration can be found in Phyllis Galembo's fascinating new photography monograph on the ritual masks, costumes and cultures of Mexico. Worn on festival days that often combine elements of indigenous and Catholic holidays, the masks, costumes and body paint that Galembo documented over several years traveling throughout of the country are all highly symbolic and specific to the characters of each regional festival. Pictured here is a character from Danza de los Santiagueros during the festival of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Chignautla, Puebla, 2015. continue to blog
Celebrate Mexico's Día de los Muertos with photographer Phyllis Galembo's classic monograph, Mexico Masks Rituals. Galembo's images allow us to reflect on the "eternal present" of ritual celebrations, essayist Sergio Rodríguez Blanco writes. "Those who look back at us from these photographs are not the individuals, but the rituals captured in real time, as unabated, materialized symbols depicted in a mosaic of almost unrealistic forms, textures and colors, similar to abstract paintings. While these photographs cannot capture the eternal present of ritual time, the wearers of masks and costumes whose chromatic range seems to overflow from these pages are there posing for the camera, detained in the fixed time, also eternal—perhaps also sacred—of photography." Featured image is "Catrina, Axtla Jacaraondosas Group, All Saints' Day" (2016) from the Xantolo festival in San Luis Potosí. All Saints' Day is the last day of the three-day festival. continue to blog
Today the Catholic world celebrates the festival of Corpus Christi, honoring the real presence of the body and blood of Jesus Christ, the flesh-and-blood person who was also the son of God. So we're featuring this 2016 photograph, "Xita Corpus," from Mexico Masks Rituals, Phyllis Galembo's new monograph documenting the ritual mask cultures of Mexico. In the Corpus Christi festival in Temascalcingo in the state of Mexico, "the townsfolk make huge masks, don outlandish costumes and transform themselves into characters known as the xita or huehues (the old ones)," George Otis writes. "They represent the ancestors who send the rains, and the theatrical ceremony is a kind of offering to them. The body of Christ is referred to as corpu viejo (the body of the old one), and this is probably not a coincidence: in many indigenous traditions the deceased Christ is considered to be the embodiment of all the ancestors." continue to blog
Phyllis Galembo's Mexico Masks Rituals is one vibrant book. Featured photograph, Family in Maguey Masks (2016), is reproduced from the section on the festival of Corpus Cristi (body of Christ), which takes place during late April or early May, "a time that coincides with the onset of the summer rains," according to essayist George Otis. "In agricultural communities that depend on rainfall, this is one of the most critical times of the year. In ancient Mesoamerica, the peoples' ancestors were deified, and became the objects of rituals and prayers for rain, fertility, health and good fortune. Even 500 years after the Spanish conquest and the Christianization of the population, Mesoamerican beliefs and practices continue to underlie much of popular Catholicism in Mexico." continue to blog
“Man with Skull Plaque” (2013) is reproduced from photographer Phyllis Galembo’s new monograph, Mexico Masks Rituals, launching with events tonight at Green-Wood Cemetery and next week at Howl! Happening. This photograph was made during the Catholic/Cora Semana Santa festival in Sierra Madre, where “the stars of the show are the Judíos (Jews), the underworld spirits who sacrifice the sun,” according to text contributor George Otis. “Beginning on the Wednesday of Holy Week, traditional order is suspended: community governments shut down, the Judíos take over, and the world is symbolically turned on its head. During three days and nights the demons run through the villages to the sounds of flutes and drums, performing a series of highly organized and choreographed rituals and dances, with little food, water or rest in between.” continue to blog
In her new book, launching with events at Green-Wood Cemetery and Howl! Happening in the next week, Phyllis Galembo photographs the fascinating, coded mask cultures of Mexico. In this image, titled “Mayo Chapakoba, Fariseo Mimicking Deer Dancer” (2008), Galembo captures a participant in the Semana Santa festival, initiated by the Spanish colonists in order to help eliminate native religions and convert native local populations to Catholicism. “During the Yaqui and Mayo Semana Santa (Easter Week), los Fariseos (the Pharisees) are some of the principal figures of the festival,” George Otis writes. “They play an unruly, demonic mob under the leadership of Pontius Pilate and with Judas as their saint. Together they represent the forces of evil that persecute Christ… Another group of Fariseos is knowns as chapobokam or chapayecas (long-nosed ones) for the masks of animal skins they wear. These masks are known as sewars and include a flower on the headpiece symbolizing rebirth. Those with long beards represent the elderly. Some decorate their headpieces with deer antlers. In northwestern Mexico the deer is a sacred animal, analogous to the jaguar in southern Mexico and Central and South America.” continue to blog
"Reyna, Queen of the Santiagos" (2017) is reproduced from Phyllis Galembo: Mexico Masks Rituals, launching tonight at Howl! Happening in the East Village. Essayist Sergio Rodríguez Blanco writes, "Within ancestral cultures living on the latitude of Earth we now call Mexico—as well as in how those cultures survive in what we call popular culture—participants in the rites which generally coincide with Roman Catholic festivities, in dance and chants, wearing masks and costumes, stop existing as themselves and morph into an ancestor, into a deity. Ritual object and corporal body become one, and catapult to a dimension beyond time or history. They revisit the myth in order to invoke their communal origin, in order to recover—for an instant—the radiance of original time, while also reinforcing their social behaviors and reclaiming their ethos." continue to blog
Thursday, May 23, from 6:30–8 PM, Morbid Anatomy presents photographer Phyllis Galembo giving a highly illustrated talk about her work on the new book, Mexico Masks Rituals, and beyond, at Green-Wood cemetery in Brooklyn. Book signing to follow. continue to blog
Thursday, May 30 from 7–9PM, Howl! Happening will host a book party and signing to celebrate the launch of Phyllis Galembo: Mexico Masks Rituals, published by Radius Books and D.A.P. Publishing. Join us for a festive night of music, projected images and libations to celebrate Galembo's newest body of work! continue to blog
Join us April 3-7 at the AIPAD Photography Show 2019, Pier 94, New York, where we will present new, classic and rare books from an array of the world's most respected photography publishers in BOOTH 629, alongside a specially curated selection of STEIDL books. Come early for advance copies of Fazal Sheikh & Teju Cole: Human Archipelago and Phyllis Galembo: Mexico Masks Rituals (which Galembo will be signing on Saturday), plus featured titles like Polarnography, Skira's limited edition of 100 boxed, never-before-published Polaroids by Nobuyoshi Araki and SPBH Editions' new Jean-Vincent Simonet photobook, In Bloom. Public Vernissage is 5–8 PM, Wednesday, April 3.
JOIN US FOR SIGNINGS WITH MONA KUHN, KARINE LAVAL, MARTHA WILSON, PHYLLIS GALEMBO, RENATE ALLER & VINCE ALETTI! continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 9.75 x 10.75 in. / 196 pgs / 120 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $45.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $55 GBP £35.00 ISBN: 9781942185574 PUBLISHER: Radius Books/D.A.P. AVAILABLE: 5/21/2019 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: WORLD Except France
Published by Radius Books/D.A.P.. Text by Sergio Rodríguez Blanco, George Otis.
The acclaimed photographer of African masks turns her lens to the astounding mask cultures of Mexico
Since 1985, photographer Phyllis Galembo has traveled extensively to photograph sites of ritual dress in Africa and the Caribbean. In her latest body of work, collected in this new publication, Galembo turns to Mexico, where she captures cultural performances with a subterranean political edge. Using a direct, unaffected portrait style, Galembo captures her subjects informally posed but often strikingly attired in traditional or ritualistic dress.
Masking is a complex tradition in which the participants transcend the physical world and enter the spiritual realm. Masks, costumes and body paint transform the human body and encode a rich range of political, artistic, theatrical, social and religious meanings on the body. In her vibrant color photographs, Galembo highlights the artistry of the performers, how they use materials from their immediate environment to morph into a fantastical representation of themselves and an idealized vision of a mythical figure. In a gorgeous, fascinating photographic survey of Mexico’s masking practices, Galembo captures her subjects suspended between past, present and future, with their religious, political and cultural affiliations—their personal and collective identifications—displayed on their bodies.
Photographer Phyllis Galembo (born 1952) received her MFA from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1977, and was Professor in the Fine Arts Department of SUNY Albany from 1978 to 2018. A 2014 Guggenheim Fellow, Galembo has photographs in numerous public and private collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New York Public Library. Her photographs of ritual masks in Africa, the Diaspora and beyond have been the subject of several monographic publications, including Maske (Aperture, 2016).
