THE COLLECTION
Eduardo Del Valle (American, born Cuba 1951), Mirta Gómez (American, born Cuba 1953)
Sac-Chich, Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico, 1994, #1 from the series Two Sections of Time Sac-Chich, Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico, 2003, #2 from the series Two Sections of Time
- Date:
- 1994
- Medium:
- Chromogenic color prints
- Dimensions:
- Each 15 7/16 x 22 15/16" (39.2 x 58.3 cm)
- Credit Line:
- Horace W. Goldsmith Fund through Robert B. Menschel
- MoMA Number:
- 906.2005.x1-x2
- Copyright:
- © 2013 Eduardo Del Valle and Mirta Gómez
The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights since 1980, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, p. 154
Husband–and–wife collaborators Del Valle and Gómez have been working together for more than thirty years. Since the mid–1980s the couple has been photographing in rural areas and small towns in the Yucatán Peninsula, returning periodically to record the changes—sometimes subtle, sometimes surprising—at particular sites. Their pictures document the effects of the seasons and of man-made modifications of the domestic architecture in the area.
The buildings in the diptych Sac-Chich, Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico appear to be in two different locations, but closer inspection reveals that one has replaced the other on the same site. During the nine-year period that separates the photographs, a traditional Mayan one-room dwelling was destroyed and replaced with its contemporary counterpart, a cinderblock cube. The only element that remains constant in both images is the red brick smokestack. Del Valle and Gómez's photographs record the passage of time while speaking to the radical transformation of the area’s history and native culture.
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