Yalom, Reid Samuel.  Colonial Noir: Photographs from Mexico.  Stanford: Stanford General Press, 2004.  85 pages. ISBN: 0804745366

In the introduction to Reid Samuel Yalom’s photo essay, Santhosh Daniel suggests that the photographer, “Explor[es] the relationship between himself and Mexico as though both were characters in a noir narrative” (xviii). Indeed while reading the photographer’s accompanying notes, it is difficult not to envision Yalom as a hardboiled private eye, skulking about in the shadows, a slave to his lust, keenly aware of the fact that the object of his affection (and gaze) may very well be playing him for a fool.  Like the cagey noir detective, Yalom is often forced to retreat into the shadows after acting too aggressively in his pursuit of “truth.” 

The trope of a white male colonizer attempting to “fix” his gaze/attentions on an unknowable “female” nation/country is quite clichéd.  It is curious that Daniel chooses to reference this hackneyed metaphor with all of its sexist and colonialist connotations of the (not so) benevolent white patriarch subjecting the primitive woman (as dark continent) to his “civilizing mission.”  Mexico as seen through Yalom’s lens, resembles the femme fatale of the noir genre, beautifully posed and lit in chiascuro tonalities, availablebut ultimately inscrutable.

Yalom’s goal as outlined in Daniel’s introduction is to, “[shift] from an isolated investigation of colonial architecture to now focus on Mexican cultural consciousness as proposed by the turbulent energy of Mexico’s postcolonial evolution.  Yalom was acutely aware of the difficulty of creating images of a culture to which he did not belong. [He] eventually decided to make this conflict the new focus of his images.” (xvi). 

The framing of Yalom’s project through the visual codes of noir was undoubtedly inspired by the preponderance of nighttime photographs in the series.  However by positing “the relationship between [Yalom] and Mexico as though both were characters in a noir narrative” more than just an aesthetic resemblance to noir is implied.  By alluding to the narrative codes of the noir genre, Daniels suggests that the relationship between Yalom and Mexico is fraught with sexual tension, opportunism, deceit, betrayal, double crossings, and unmitigated self-interest hidden beneath the surface of what Joan Riviere would refer to as “womanliness as masquerade.”  By framing the photographic narrative within these terms, it is difficult to imagine how Yalom’s project can provide any insight into Mexican cultural consciousness.  

Mark Citret in the foreword to Yalom’s book situates the artist’s work within,

[A] long legacy of Americans exploring Mexico with their cameras. I’m not speaking of the hordes of northern tourists endlessly snapping every ‘colorful’ scene they stumble upon. I refer instead to the tradition exemplified by the Mexican photographs of Paul Strand and Edward Weston, and suggest that Colonial Noir reflect[s] the same deep and sincere fascination with the country’s people, culture, and architecture.” (xiii).

Citret makes a distinction between both the high (fine art photography) and the low (tourist snapshots), as well as drawing an imaginary line dividing the culturally insensitive Yankee tourists who take “endless” snapshots of anything perceived as “colorful” from the culturally sensitive and sincere Strand, Weston and Yalom.  Citret’s commentary takesfor granted that the reader shares his assumptions about the cosmopolitan American Modernist photographer and the typical invasive and culturally arrogant American tourist. 

However, the relative absence of the human figure in Yalom’s photographs suggests that he is more interested in architecture -- specifically colonial architecture -- than in Mexican culture or people.  In the few instances in which figures do appear, they nearly always serve as counterpoint to the focus on architecture or the surrounding environment. Despite the fact that Yalom identifies his project as an exploration of  “Mexican cultural consciousness as proposed by the turbulent energy of Mexico’s postcolonial evolution” (xvi), his static and largely unpeopled images do little to indicate that we are looking at contemporary postcolonial Mexico.  The occasional glimpse of electric lights and a few fragmented antique automobiles suggest that contemporary Mexicans exist in a sort of geographical and temporal warp. Yalom’s contemporary postcolonial Mexico is suspiciously reminiscent of Brassaï’s Paris and images of both pre- and post-Castro Havana. His images of disembodied weathered and/or laboring hands, bird sellers, cobble stone streets, and neglected religious paraphernalia could be construed as fine art versions of all things “colorful.”

Strangely, Yalom suggests that it was while on his honeymoon in Indonesia that he was inspired to embark on his subsequent Mexican project.  Ostensibly this is the reasoning behind the choice of a photograph taken in Sumatra for the frontispiece of a book showcasing photographs of Mexico.  Yalom suggests that it was in Sumatra that he became “interested in how foreign objects interact with indigenous landscapes” (x). After perusing the book at length I found myself wishing that Yalom had been ironically referring to himself as the “foreign object interact[ing] with indigenous landscapes.”