Mario Algaze was born in Havana in 1947. He emigrated from Cuba to the Unites States at the age of 13. His travels to South America began in 1974. He continues to live in Miami, Florida but the focus of his work is in Latin America. Mario is a self-taught photographer who produces images that are elegant, contemplative and structurally complex. Mario Algaze’s photographs concentrate on the passing of time. Architecture and the physical manifestations of worn buildings, old streets, hotels and restaurants provide the material of his carefully composed images. The local color of the businessmen, laborers, and children act to ground the pictures to a specific culture and create a temporal link to societies where technology and modernization matter much less than the customary and traditional rhythms of daily lives.
Javier Silva-Meinel was born in Lima Peru in 1949. He studied both economics and photography. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for his work about Andean ritual practices. Recently his work has concentrated on the Amazon Basin where native communities still follow customs and traditions that link the present to the past and inscribe cultural practices that are foreign to us. Javier Silva-Meinel’s pictures depict animals and fish and the relationships that are critical for the ecology and survival of the indigenous people. However, the associations are more than physical. They have strong symbolic, cultural and mythic dimensions.
