Michel Hurst: Órale: Love and Death in Mexico City

Join us for a conversation with Chris Wiley, Nan Goldin, and Robert Swope to celebrate the debut book of late photographer Michel Hurst, a collection of photographs made in and around his adopted home of Mexico City over a period of 8 years.

PLEASE NOTE: RSVPs are encouraged but not required. Seating is limited and will be first come, first served. Doors open at 5:30 pm.

Can't attend? here.

"Through his camera, we see a Mexico that is racked with pain and beset with poverty, but is buoyed by the perpetual engine of eroticism and the promise of spiritual grace." —Chris Wiley.

This volume is the debut book of photographs by the late photographer and collector Michel Hurst (1948–2023). Made in and around his adopted home of Mexico City over a period of roughly six years, Órale's photographs pulse with the lifeblood of a country marred by suffering but consistently renewed by the promise of redemption. Through Hurst's lens, the reader absorbs ancient rituals and new cults, beauty and degradation, danger and tenderness, lust and longing. With the flinty eye of a hard-bitten street photographer and the soft touch of an aesthete, Hurst shows us not just Mexico but the human condition itself. This monograph includes an introduction by acclaimed photographer and activist Nan Goldin, an essay by New Yorker photography critic Chris Wiley, and an afterword by Hurst's husband of 40 years, Robert Swope.

Chris Wiley is a writer and artist based in Woodstock, NY. He contributes regularly to the New Yorker, and has written for numerous catalogs and publications including Aperture, Elle, Frieze, Kaleidoscope, ArtForum.com, and FOAM. His photographic work has been included in exhibitions at MoMA PS1, Atlanta Contemporary, Marian Goodman, Hauser and Wirth, and Marianne Boesky, among others. He is represented by Nicelle Beauchene Gallery in New York.

Nan Goldin is an American photographer and artist. Since the 1970s her work has explored notions of gender and definitions of normality. By documenting her life and the lives of the friends who surround her, Goldin gives a voice and visibility to her communities especially the bohemian LGBT communities which were deeply impacted by the devastating HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s. These images of her “extended family” became the subject of her seminal slide show and first book The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. Her retrospective This Will Not End Well, the first exhibition dedicated to her work as a filmmaker, is currently traveling through Europe (Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin; Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan; and Grand Palais Rmn, Paris).

She is the founding member of the advocacy group P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) which targeted the pharmaceutical companies responsible for the overdose epidemic. She has been an outspoken advocate for Palestine since the1970s. She lives and works in New York City and Paris.

Robert Swope. Born in Nashville, Tennessee. Graduate of Eckerd College Class of 1976. Singer/Lyricist of legendary NYC No Wave band, Beirut Slump, from 1979. Co-founded with Michel Hurst the New York City 20th Century Design Gallery, Full House (1985-2014). Editor along with Michel Hurst of the photography book Casa Susanna—an archive of found photographs of mid-century cross-dressers published in 2005. Currently living in Mexico City.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Rizzoli Bookstore