Enrique Metinides died, the prodigy who made beauty out of tragedy

On Tuesday morning, the death was announced at the age of 88. Henry Metinidestoday recognized as one of the prodigies of photography in our country, despite the fact that his work was made invisible for decades by the stigma of red note photojournalistic work.

The news about his death immediately generated reactions of respect and recognition from cultural institutions, officials, members of the union and the media.

“A living legend of Mexican journalism. Rest in peace and may his work be better known by new generations, ”he wrote. Jenaro Villamilpresident of the Public Broadcasting System of the Mexican State.

“We join in the condolences for the death of Henry Metinideswhose photographic gaze captured the gloomy and beautiful ritual of death, the one that is identified with the sensationalist chronicles of the Mexican press,” wrote the Centro de la Imagen.

The UNAM Culture Coordination He also referred to the teacher: “at the age of 8 – he said – they already published the photos that, more than games, were his passion: street scenes, a crash. Enrique Metinides took red note photography to an artistic dimension. We celebrate his work: a lifetime in the Mexican press. Rest in peace”.

Owner of an unmistakable lens, of an instinctive and immediate gaze, capable of blending the tragedy of an urban sprawl as convulsive as Mexico City with the beauty of perspective and light, Metinides’ work has been vindicated in recent decades and not before. Through the photographic archive he became a master of technique and reaction for the new generations of photojournalists in our country.

His life and work was reflected in the documentary feature film “El hombre que saw mucho”, filmed in 2015 by the director Trisha Ziff and deserving of the Ariel for Best Documentary Feature Film and the Ariel for Best Original Music.

About his work, the critic and writer Iván Farías said that Metinides was a “poet of catastrophe, a compulsive collector, a unique character, a precocious child of the red note. He never wanted to be an artist and yet he gave us the most beautiful postcards of Mexican misfortune”.

a precocious genius

Son of Greek parents and born on February 12, 1934, metinides He began his journalistic work at a very young age. Before he was 10 years old, he began his work as a road accident photographer with a camera that his father gave him and published the first images of him as if he were an experienced photographer. Not long after, he began working as an assistant at the newspaper La Prensa, a medium for which he worked for decades. The rest is history.

Several of his works have become true icons of journalistic work and have been exhibited in Mexico and abroad, for example, in House of the Americasin Madrid; The Photographers Galleryin London, and the gallery Anton KernIn New York.

Books have also been published on his photographic work, such as the edition “101 tragedies of Enrique Metinides” and “Enrique Metinides: the theater of the facts”. Likewise, he was included in the anthology “A chronicle of the red note in Mexico: from Posada to Metinides, and from the Tiger of Santa Julia to organized crime”, by Rafael Barajas.

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