A Lens on Mexico’s Mean Streets

A Lens on Mexico’s Mean Streets:
Bernandino Hernandez and Enric Marti in conversation with Mort Rosenblum
Monday, February 12, 2018
6pm

Bernandino Hernandez’s electrifying photos of life and death in Acapulco depict a reality that words can’t approach. He taught himself photography as an 11-year-old orphan and now, with a network of contacts, often reaches crime scenes before police. His lens captures grim brutality with touches of humanity, conveying the tragic irony of a peaceable people suffering indescribable violence.

Enric Marti, Associated Press photo editor for Latin America and Spain, brought his work to the annual Bayeux-Calvados War Correspondents Awards in France. It stopped the show. Seasoned conflict photographers and correspondents moved from picture to picture, taking in their overall impact and subtle nuances. Hernandez then captivated them, describing the obstacles he faces with self-deprecating humor and chilling detail.

This month, Guerrero State police beat Hernandez mercilessly and smashed his camera, threatening to do worse if he kept taking pictures — which he will.

Marti’s own award-winning work is legendary. He worked in Nicaragua during the 1980s and then moved to Sarajevo, where AP snapped him up. He was Middle East photo editor based in Jerusalem and Cairo during tumultuous years before moving to Mexico.

Mort Rosenblum, reporter, author, and educator, has covered stories on seven continents since the 1960s, from war in Biafra to tango dancing by the Seine. He was editor of the International Herald Tribune; special correspondent for The Associated Press; AP bureau chief in Africa, Southeast Asia, Argentina, and France; and founding editor of the quarterly, dispatches.

FREE for MOCA members, non-members $10
Admission includes light snacks and refreshments

Hernandez and Marti will also appear at the UA Library at 5:30 p.m., Feb. 13 in a panel sponsored by the Center for Border and Global Journalism. Co-director Mort Rosenblum, who worked with Marti in Bosnia and the Middle East, will moderate.