March 21, 2011

Volcanoes: Drtikol, Cartier-Bresson, Velasco

The Czech photographer František Drtikol is well known because of his Art Deco portraits, some of which look like landscapes.

When I saw his Snow wave, from Woman in Light (before 1938), I recalled an image by Henri Cartier-Bresson of Mexican volcano Popocatépetl.


The funny thing is that next to it there is another volcano called Iztaccíhuatl, which means White woman, but is usually dubbed as Lying woman, since according to the Aztec legend, Iztaccíhuatl is a dead woman covered with snow. In facto, the volcanic formation resembles the body of a lying woman.

The composition, in fact, looks rather similar to José María Velasco's Camino a Chalco (1891) and to a random image found on the internet.




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