Eye on Mexico.

JOHN SPENCE WEIR: SURREAL SPACES

ART GALLERY AT DIABLO VALLEY COLLEGE 

PLEASANT HILL, CALIFORNIA 

AUGUST 3-SEPTEMBER 20, 2006

John Spence Weir's intense love of Mexico began in 1958 when he went to Chihuahua to bury his mother who died while living in the region. In 1961, he began traveling and photographing throughout Mexico with his Latina wife, Victoria. Although working in a black-and-white documentary style, his early untitled photographs have an edge. His use of rich blacks effectively expresses the mystery of the land, people, and culture. He focuses on the formal qualities of the objects within the image. A bicycle lying on its side is juxtaposed with the reflection of a building in a pool of water, a simple stairway seems to emanate light. In a precursor to the work in his "Windback" series, Weir photographed a cross and the letters "CO," meaning "COKE," and divided the composition down the middle. In another photograph, Weir captures a Coca-Cola sign adjacent to a sign reading, "Cantina." Another image, a candid shot of a young girl lost in childhood reverie, pays homage to Henri Cartier-Bresson. Weir said of his photographs, "I try not to make only a document." (1)

Using a Leica camera with a 25 mm lens, Weir began his innovative "Windback" series in 1965. The process involved combining two frames so that one frame slightly overlapped the next, resulting in a multiple image. The juxtapositioning of images, both by design and by chance, resulted in provocative and engaging images. He also experimented by solarizing and hand-coloring some of these images, emphasizing their uniqueness. While living near San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district in the 1960s, Weir worked in the tradition of Eugene Atget and the surrealists in Paris, turning his camera on mannequins in store windows. In his early years he photographed exclusively in black and white, using a wide-angle lens against the shop windows. Playing with the viewer's erotic imagination, Weir photographed the mannequins to appear real, but provided a clue to their true identity. The designers of the mannequins were themselves innovative in that they transformed seemingly stoic and aloof mannequins into humanoids, providing the subject's for Weir's visual game.

Along with his love of Mexico comes Weir's interest in its history. In 1985, he visited the Extremadura region of Spain because it was the homeland of numerous Spanish conquistadors. Located in western Spain adjacent to Portugal, the Extremadura region is a poor and barren land. Weir's visit was a photographic epiphany. He quickly realized that, in contrast to Mexico, there was little color aside from the brown earth, black clothes, and white houses that predominate. In the town of Guadalupe, he photographed three elderly women in black conversing while knitting outdoors. In another image, an elderly woman, also dressed in black, sweeps stairs. Again referencing Cartier-Bresson, Weir photographed a young girl in a white dress holding a pail. His experience in Spain dramatically changed his perspective of the Mexican landscape as well as his photography.

After his return from Spain, Weir continued his travels in Mexico with renewed interest and enthusiasm. Having made over twenty trips to Mexico, he realized it was gradually losing its expression of Indianismo and, consequently, its wonderful colors. (2) Although he began photographing Mexico to preserve its unique colors and forms, his images are not simply documents but also abstractions tinged with surrealism. Andre Breton, visiting Mexico in 1938, dubbed it, "The [s]urrealist place par excellence." (3)

Among these colorful and engaging photographs, there are several stunning jewels in Weir's recent exhibition, "Surreal Spaces." In San Miguel de Allende (2001), the simple sculptured forms of a building are revealed through the interplay of reverberating color, light, and form. A weathered turquoise wall seems like the prow of a ship in San Augustin de Etla, Oaxaca (2001) and the wisp of a small white cloud suspended above the wall in the upper left adds to its mystery. In Punta Banda, Baja (2001), a weathered stairway by the sea is magically transformed into an abstract painting. A strong sense of color and light predominate in all of these photographs.

Returning to the aesthetic of his "Windbacks," Weir breaks his compositions down the middle. In Mexico City (2000), a yellow pole on a yellow cement curb divides the photograph as painted yellow arrows oppose each other. Two red shutter doors surrounded by a yellow wall are divided by a red and white barrier in Tijuana (2000). Highway 45, South of Zacatecas (1993) consists of a moody red landscape with a cloudy sky on the left side of the image, while a dramatic mural of the Crucifixion is painted on a building on the right side.

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While there are many engaging photographs in the exhibition, Flower Stand (1988), consisting of a black umbrella shading a small, blue bucket of red roses, is especially memorable, as is Watermelon Stand, Morelia (1988), where the freshly cut red fruit seems to float in the air. In Laguna de Bacalar, Quintana Roo (1997), the blue sea, an overcast sky, a pier, a ladder, a yellow rope, and a red chair seat all coalesce into a painterly and meditative image.

"Surreal Spaces" is a testament to Weir's commitment to both of his passions--photography and Mexico's Indianismo. It is a remarkable exhibition that delights the eye and provides unexpected insights into "the [s]urrealist place par excellence."

DARWIN MARABLE is a photo historian, lecturer, writer, and independent curator based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

NOTES 1. Lecture by John Spence Weir, University of California, Berkeley Extension, October 9, 2001. 2. Ibid. 3. Mark Polizzotti, The Revolution of the Mind: The Life of Andre Breton (New York: Straus and Giroux, 1995), 454.