Memory isn’t static, and neither is the photographic image. Recuerdo: Latin American Photography at the AGO, now open in Toronto, leans into this tension with a selection of over 100 works drawn from the gallery’s collection. The exhibition brings together foundational image-makers from Latin America, diasporic voices, and Canadian photographers who’ve engaged deeply with the region. Curated by Marina Dumont-Gauthier, the project takes its name from the Spanish word recuerdo —a term that speaks both to memory and the act of remembering— setting the tone for a show that unfolds across timelines, identities, and geographies.
Mexico forms the initial point of entry, anchored by the black-and-white work of artists like Lola Álvarez Bravo, Flor Garduño, and Tina Modotti. Alongside them, the photographs of Reva Brooks and Michel Lambeth reframe the way proximity and perspective function in visual culture. Graciela Iturbide appears in a major way: over thirty of her works are installed in dialogue, spanning her time with Indigenous communities in Sonora and Oaxaca, her self-portraits, and lesser-known images from India. Archival material from a 1988 Canada-Mexico cultural exchange traces her relationship with Toronto, adding weight to the AGO’s ongoing commitment to her work.
The political dimension of the show sharpens with documentary coverage from the 1970s to 1990s. Images of guerrilla fighters in Central America by Michael Mitchell and Larry Towell, Italian press photos from Chile, and anonymous prints from Argentina build a fragmented map of unrest and resistance. Barbara Astman’s Dancing with Che series speaks from the present, revisiting revolutionary iconography with a poetic, almost ghostly lens, not to claim it, but to question what’s still legible within it.
Rafael Goldchain closes the exhibition on a note of searching. Born in Chile, based in Canada, and often in motion between the two, his photographs made across Mexico and Central America don’t settle into a single narrative. There’s a sense of dislocation in the images that aligns with the show’s larger rhythm: the layering of place, memory, and cultural inheritance. Recuerdo runs through October 19 at the Art Gallery of Ontario, with an accompanying digital publication available for free. Admission is free for visitors under 25, AGO members, and Indigenous Peoples.
Team Editorial Services. Anti Pinochet protesters with a banner, 1973-1973.
Rafael Goldchain, Itinerant Photographer's Studio (Recuerdo), Coban, Guatemala, 1987.
Reva Brooks. Velorio (The Wake) - Elodia's child, c. 1948.
Rafael Goldchain, Nocturnal Encounter, Comayagüa, Honduras, 1987.
Argentinian. [Peronist Youth groups walking toward the Ezeiza airport], June 20, 1973.