2014 Lucie Honoree, Pedro Meyer

Pedro Meyer

2014 Honoree: Visionary award

Pedro_Meyer_cNadia_Baram_medPedro Meyer is one of the pioneers and most recognized representatives of contemporary photography. He was the founder and president of the Consejo Mexicano de Fotografía (Mexican Council of Photography) in 1975, and organizer of the first three Latin American Photography Colloquiums. Besides his artistic photographic work, Pedro Meyer has been a teacher in various prestigious institutions, as well as the curator, editor, founder and director of the renowned photography website ZoneZero, which hosts the work of over a thousand photographers from all over the world.

In 2004 Pedro Meyer set what seemed like an impossible goal: to hold the first world wide simultaneous retrospective. This project, titled Heresies, is comprised of over 60 simultaneous exhibitions in 17 countries around the world, and is a database containing his entire life’s work (+450,000 images and documents) and a book with the same title. This worldwide retrospective was celebrated during October 2008. Each exhibition was different from the other, as the curators chose from a pool of 3,000 images, setting to rest the notion that there is only one “right” curatorial voice.

In 1991, he published the very first CD-ROM in the world that had “wall to wall” images and sound, titled “I Photograph to Remember”. He is also the author of the books “Tiempos de América” (American Times), “Espejo de Espinas” (Mirror of Thorns), and “Los Cohetes duraron todo el día” (The Fireworks Lasted All Day). His book “Truths and Fictions: A journey of documentary photography to digital”, edited by Aperture, was also made later into a CD-ROM by Voyager in 1995. “The Real and the True” published by Peach Pitt Press came out in 2005. His latest book, “Heresies”, came out in 2008 and was published by editorial house Lunwerg. Published by Seagull Press in 2011, “A Kind of Touching Beauty” showcases photographs of America by Pedro Meyer and text by Jean-Paul Sartre. Two more books are coming out in 2014, both on Mexico City.

Pedro Meyer has imparted more than a hundred lectures on the subject of photography and new technologies in important festivals, museums and academic institutions in Mexico, The United States, England, Germany, Argentina, Spain, Ecuador and Sweden amongst others. He has been a guest artist in the University of Colorado in Boulder, Centro de Estudios Fotográficos in Vigo, Spain and The Arizona Western College in Yuma, Arizona.

His work has been presented in more than 260 exhibitions in museums and galleries all over the world, and is part of very important permanent collections that include: The National Art Museum of China in Beijing, The Guangzhou Museum of Art, also in China, The Akron Museum of Art in Akron, Ohio, The Queens Museum in New York, The Australian Centre for Photography in Sydney, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Victoria and Albert Museum in London, The Musée National D’art Moderne Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, The International Center of Photography also in New York, George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, The California Museum of Photography, in Riverside, The Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona, Casa de Las Américas, Havana, Cuba, Centro Studi e Archivo della Comunicazione della Università of Parma, Italy, and Comune di Anghiari, Palazzo Pretorio, Italy amongst others.

He was awarded the prestigious Guggenheim grant in 1987, the Internazionale di Cultura Citta di Anghiari in 1985, and in 1993 he received the National Endowment for the Arts in conjunction with Jonathan Green and the California Museum of Photography in Riverside. He has also received numerous awards in Mexican Photography Biennales and the very first grant destined to a Web project, awarded by the Rockefeller Foundation.

In 2007, Pedro Meyer created The Pedro Meyer Foundation to contribute to the reflection, interpretation, and research regarding the photographic image within the framework of the new technologies. He is currently the Foundation’s President and a very prolific artist whose personal work is constantly provoking philosophical questions and exploring technological changes.

In 2014, he built the FOTO MUSEO 4 Caminos, an important contribution to the world of photography, with education at the center of its goals.