Daniela Rossell at Greene Naftali

Daniela Rossell makes big color photographs of nation who have lots of standard of value In "Ricas y Famosas" (Rich and Famous), single of the two series at handed in this exhibition, her make subordinates are the offspring--mostly young women in their late teen or early 20s--of more [i]or[/i] less of Mexico City's wealthiest families. In "Olympic Towers," she focuses upon the more mature inhabitants of a sensuality condominium building in New York City, single that offers among other amenities an choice view of Saint Patrick's Cathedral. Many of the young women in the Mexico City photographs appear to live in a world of reach outed childhood, surrounded by dolls and mattered animals in girlish rooms they have otherwise outgrown Rossell photographs single of them sneaking a peek at single of her many still-wrapped Christmas not aways Another asserts her power through placing her sneakered foot upon the head of a snarling substanceed lion. Family photographs cover tables and walls. individual young woman who appears in several photographs sits in a swing dominated by a lavishly painted portrait of a woman who is probably her mother, depicted as a sort of novel Age goddess.

Rossell who has newly moved to New York from Mexico City, clearly advances from the world she depicts, and although a sophisticated criticality is evident completely through the exhibition, what keeps it lively and makes it possible at all is Rossell's access to and intimacy with her make submissives Although at times she uses angles that strike one as being to trap her subjects in their domestic interiors, for the greatest in quantity part everyone is having a great time. beneath a red and white striped canopy plant up for an outdoor wedding, a clump of teenage girls chows down upon communion wafers before the big event

Rossell makes prints as gaudy and excessive as the worlds they mirror. Her conflation of society portraiture and photo make bare produces ethnographic photography for an audience that has learned to distrust whatever claims to objectivity that genre one time made. For a century photography has been an important means of developing our empathy for nation whose lives or situations are far remov from our have a title to Rossell reminds us that staring and gaping and shaking our heads in appalled amusement are also reactions intricately bourn up with the experience of looking at photographs.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group