Enrique Metinides

ambulance chasing-type photography has a long and rich history, but none that i've seen quite compares with the pictures made by enrique metinides, a mexican photographer born in 1934 who published his first picture at age 12. which may go some way toward explaining how perfect his composition and timing are -- but only some.

here's a good way of illustrating the unique talent of metinides's vision: compare him with weegee. weegee is the american car wreck police scene photographer par excellence, and metinides is sometimes referred to in "western-centric" analysis as the mexican weegee. it's true that weegee predated metinides by at least 30 years, but when you look at the body of weegee's work, it's sensationalistic in a way that metinides's is not. here are a couple of examples:







these are pictures made to gawk at, cheaply.





on the other hand, here is metinides's picture of a suicide:



and



a big part of what's so impressive is the restraint. metinides is a newspaper photographer, yet he's able to sacrifice gore and melodrama in favor of quiet, extremely direct emotion. this is sensational -- no question about it -- but there's no way of getting around the inherently sensationalistic premise of photographing death. if it's to be done, i prefer metinides's way.

the fact that images like these ran in the mainstream mexican press as news photos says something about the difference between what sells papers in mexico, and what sells papers in the states, and maybe it tells us a little something about the differences in our national characters. but i don't want to infer too much.

and a last note. i'm not trying to elevate metinides by praising him above a canonical american photographer -- he doesn't need the help. he's gotten a lot of attention in new york lately, which is how i know about him, and is renowned all over the world. comparisons are just instructive sometimes. yeah. the end.