All images © Yvonne Venegas
What we get in Yvonne Venegas' project Maria Elvia de Hank is a double-glazed representation of the Mexican bourgeois, and more specifically the particulars of one woman's creation of self-conscious social ideals and how she reifies them. In Venegas' own words:
"The focus of this project is the life, family and surroundings of Maria Elvia de Hank, the wife of the eccentric millionaire and Tijuana’s ex-mayor Mr. Jorge Hank Rohn. With her as the axis of my project, I am interested in how a woman who is wife of one of the wealthiest entrepreneurs of Mexico, builds with a perfectionist touch, a social and beauty ideal that participates as an example in both her private and public life, all this within the Tijuana upper middle class, one that is transparently still under construction."
Maria Elvia de Hank is brought to us a year after the completion of Venegas' MFA in Visual Arts at University of California San Diego. Apart from assisting various photographers including Rineke Dijkstra and Juergen Teller, Venegas' time prior to her MFA was largely spent working as a freelance photographer and teacher.
To view more of Maria Elvia de Hank and Venegas' other projects, check out her website as www.yvonnevenegas.com
