Photo Exhibit Portrays Evolution Of Mexican Women

(EFE)

The evolution and contributions of Mexican women to society over the last 100 years is portrayed in the exhibition "Las Americas. Mexico" at the Spain Cultural Center in Mexico City.

The display of 350 photographs, many from the Agencia Efe archives, tell the story of how women have enriched Mexican society since the beginning of photography as a social chronicle.

"The photographic image is the resource we have chosen to illustrate the leading role women have played in Mexico's daily life, and their unending fight to defend their rights," the director of the exhibition, Alfons Martinell, said at the inauguration.

"Las Americas" is a traveling exhibition previously staged in Colombia, and after Mexico will move on to Uruguay. In each country the selection of photos is different and focuses on the leadership roles played by the women in each place.

A distinctive element of the Mexican exhibit is a tribute to the work of 12 women photojournalists, each of whom chose one of their shots for the show and accompanied it with a descriptive text.

Efe's Sashenka Gutiérrez and Elisabeth Ruíz are two of the professionals honored in this section.
To stage the exhibition, Martinell and his team chose the pictures for the show from more than 3,500 photos, largely taken from the photographic fund of Spain's international news agency as well as from various photographic archives such as that of Mexico's National Anthropology and History Institute, or INAH.