For many years, this American
photographer who lives in France has been travelling throughout
Mexico with "lottery eyes". Her name is Jill Hartley and her game
consists of compiling, from the personal recordings of her roaming
camera, a series of images as an homage and a variation on the
pictures from the popular game of chance that has been for decades
and is still a favorite pastime in village fairs and family
gatherings.
In this manner, the Mexican
landscape, the people in their ordinary comings and goings, their
everyday, the daily flora and fauna, provide the models for a lottery
in black and white, a new reinterpretation of that colorful universe
where luck chooses between the lady and the devil, the barrel and the
mermaid, the venomous scorpion and death with her scythe. Thus the
picture of a woman is now occupied by an aereal portrait of the
volcano Iztaccihualtl (a.k.a."the sleepingwoman") and an electric
light bulb used as a flower pot, takes the part of the pear. As it
happens, the star is also a piñata. And to the feast of images
the modern airplane has been invited: shadow and silhuette over the
biggest, most populated city in the world.
Jill Hartley's Photographic Lottery
was first shown to the public at the Mexican Cultural Center in Paris,
France, early in 1995. It was reissued in 1999 and 2008.
It was exhibited for the first time in the Mexican Cultural Centre of Paris, France, in 1995 and in Mexico at the Centre for Image in 1996
.