May 2 – October 19, 2025
AGO, Level 1
Recuerdo: Latin American Photography opens at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) on May 2, 2025, offering a rich, multifaceted journey into Latin American identity, history, and memory through photography. The exhibition features over 100 powerful works drawn from the AGO’s growing photography collection, including newly acquired and rarely seen pieces.
Exploring a broad spectrum of subject matter—portraits, landscapes, architecture, and political unrest—Recuerdo showcases the perspectives of key Latin American image-makers, artists of the diaspora, and Canadian photographers who have long engaged with the region.
Curated by Marina Dumont-Gauthier, AGO Curatorial Assistant, Photography, the exhibition invites reflection on what defines “Latin American” photography. “‘Recuerdo’—a word that means both ‘memory’ and ‘I remember’ in Spanish—became the guiding concept,” says Dumont-Gauthier. “These photographs are shaped by personal and collective histories, spanning borders and time.”
The exhibition begins with a focus on Mexico, featuring evocative black-and-white images by Lola Álvarez Bravo, Tina Modotti, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, and others. Works by Canadian photographers like Reva Brooks and Michel Lambeth add another layer of cultural exchange.
A major highlight is a dedicated installation of over 30 works by Graciela Iturbide, whose lens has captured Indigenous communities in Mexico, including the Seris in Sonora and the Zapotecs in Oaxaca. The AGO holds Canada’s largest public collection of her work, a legacy dating back to a 1988 Canada/Mexico Exchange—archival material from which is also on view.
The exhibition also addresses political turmoil in Latin America. Photographs by Michael Mitchell, Larry Towell, and others document conflicts across Central and South America, alongside historic press photos from the Black Star Collection.
Closing the exhibition are vivid chromogenic prints by Rafael Goldchain, a Chilean-Canadian photographer who explored themes of memory and identity during his travels through Mexico and Central America in the 1980s.
Recuerdo is on view until October 19, 2025, in the Edmond G. Odette Family Gallery and Robert & Cheryl McEwen Gallery. Admission is free for AGO Members, Annual Pass holders, Indigenous Peoples, and Ontarians under 25. A free digital publication, written by Dumont-Gauthier, will be available for download starting May 2 at ago.ca.
