Valle de los Caídos
Photograph
Valle de los Caídos
Valley of the Fallen
1981
Inkjet print, printed 2005
Image: 27 5/8 × 40 5/16 in. (70.1 × 102.4 cm)
Paper: 33 1/16 × 43 15/16 in. (83.9 × 111.6 cm)
Gift of the photographer, 2016
2016.0009.0001
Inscriptions [no inscriptions]
TextPedro Meyer was one of the first Mexican photographers to embrace the new digital technologies of the early 1990s. To emphasize the constructed nature of a medium celebrated for its objectivity, he digitally manipulated the analog photographs he had made earlier in his career. His digital application of “brushstrokes,” which obscure an otherwise gruesome scene in a butcher’s shop, and the title of the work, which names a monument built by fascist dictator Francisco Franco (1892–1975) to commemorate his supporters who died during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), render the scene both mysterious and confrontational.
