Enrique Metínides: The Tragedy Portraitist
“I’ve seen everything: bus crashes, plane crashes, car crashes, cars with buses, cars and trains, bicycle accidents. I’ve been at the scene of crime, of murders, sometimes murders for very silly things, crimes of passion, where entire families were shocked by a moment, where control was completely lost. Shootings, drownings and stabbings. A person died and his family was left without income, or a man ended up in prison and his family suffered for it.”
A woman cries next to the body of her boyfriend who was stabbed in the Chapultepec Park. México City, 1995.
“I've seen everything”, says Enrique Metinides (Mexico City, 1934), identified as an icon of the sensationalist mexican press. Pictures of disaster and tragedy have been directly connected to him since he was 12 years old. But for now, his photos have transcended the journalistic medium and are taking place in exhibitions, making them part of the field of art, where what is exalted is the formal beauty that accompanies the harshness of each frame.
His parents, from Athens, Greece, came to Mexico on a honeymoon trip that turned into an indefinite stay due to diplomatic circumstances during the First World War. His father, owner of a camera shop and film developer, had a fondness for gangster movies since childhood, which encouraged Metinides' interest in reading about, writing, and documenting violent, tragic, and gruesome events (known as red note journalism in Mexico) from an early age.
A picture of a plane crash that killed a flight instructor and student.
"These films are the ones I saw as a kid...", says Enrique referring to the police films he watched in the cinemas of San Juan Letrán in his youth. Danger and suspense forced him to keep his eyes fixed on the screen and try to solve the mystery of these narratives.
His father gave him a camera and a bag full of film, material with which he would start a first collection of images, his first exercise as a reporter. He began capturing monuments: the Alameda Central, Paseo de la Reforma, buildings – many of which did not exist after the 1985 Mexico City earthquake– the railway station, the traffic, and common scenes of the streets during these decades.
Enrique Metinides's picture of an actress who was hit by a car on Avenida Chapultepec.
Mexico City, 1979.
Motivated by cinematic language, he began to frequent the delegations where the crashed cars were sent and began to photograph them. At the age of 10 he obtained permission from the Public Prosecutor's Office to accompany the police and photograph tragic scenes, accidents, street fights or crimes, detainees, etc.
Antonio Velázquez “el Indio”, a reporter from the “La Prensa” newspaper, saw Enrique’s unusual interest in bloody scenes and offered him his first job as a “nota roja” photographer. In an interview for Revista 192, Metinides says that his first experience in this work was recording scenes inside the Lecumberri Penitentiary. "And who do you think I met... “El Sapo”.
He was a prisoner who had killed 168 people and another five in prison… he was the main boss in jail, and he was so wicked that when they were going to send him to the Mary Islands, he killed someone again in jail so that they would open a new file and he wouldn´t be transferred ”.
Picture taken during a shootout at a supermarket. Mexico City, 1988.
After that, Enrique was admitted to Juarez Hospital, where autopsies were carried out on the dead brought in by the Red Cross. Thus, he managed to portray the murderers in the penitentiary and the corpses in the morgue, reconstructing the puzzles of these criminal stories.
At the same time, he started working with the fire department of Mexico City, and got a first-hand look at these daily disasters and the surrounding events.
He also began operating as a press correspondent for the Red Cross located between Monterrey and Durango streets in the Roma neighborhood of Mexico City, where he got permission to be in the ambulances’ routes for 30 days.
"I was walking in the devil's house... every day I got on the ambulances... my parents never knew where I was going... they thought I was playing with the kids out there, and I was far away, taking pictures... some crazy things that I did, but my photos were published in the press...", he told “Revista 192” with proud nostalgia.
Jesus Bazaldua Barber, telecommunications engineer, is fatally electrocuted by more than 6000 volts when trying to change a telephone line.
Toluca, México, January 29, 1971.
In the transit of police fiction –with which he was obsessed–, to the harsh reality he portrayed through his lens, Metinides was invited to participate in the birth of “Revista Alarma” –which today is recognized as a cult classic magazine– where they began to publish the reports he did working for the Red Cross. By the age of 14, he was already a recognized media photographer.
A scene with a young man crying that almost hides its emotional punch line: the man with the open mouth and grimacing eyes.
Metinides managed to portray even in the smallest detail, raw and grotesque facets of reality, with which he generated bewilderment and rejection for more than 30 years. Today his work is part of the trend of contemporary photography that document human emotions caused by intense and raw scenes.
Where usually the aesthetic construction of the stories and dramas seems to be starring the victims, in many cases it is also the "peepers"; the photographers, who take centre stage, the ones faced with the tragic event.
A Mexican airline plane from Chicago crashes and falls into Lake Texcoco.
32 dead and 80 injured. México CIty, September 1969.
At 87 years old, Enrique Metinides has exhibited his work in Casa de América, Madrid, Spain; La Central de Arte Guadalajara, Guadalajara, Mexico; The Photographers' Gallery in London, United Kingdom; the Anton Kern Gallery in New York; the Foto Museo Cuatro Caminos and the Museo del Estanquillo in Mexico City, among many other spaces.
Furthermore he has published the book 101 Tragedies of Enrique Metenides, which contains iconic images that the photographer himself has chosen, as well as having inspired the documentary El hombre que vio demasiado directed by Trisha Ziff in 2015.