Gelatin silver printexpand_more
Gift of the Nivin and Duncan MacMillan Foundationexpand_more 2018.74.1
Photographer, caricaturist, painter, and gallery owner Leo Matiz was among the most influential photojournalists of the 20 th century. Noted for portraits of the celebrated artists and writers he encountered while working for Life Magazine in New York City, Matiz also earned recognition for his work in the Middle East as a photographer for the United Nations during the 1940s. This striking image of a highly unusual volcanic eruption in southern Mexico depicts a landscape ravaged by natural forces, the earth rendered nearly lifeless by the fiery column in the distance. As a photographer accustomed to documenting postwar crises, Matiz depicts this geological calamity in the manner of one bearing witness to the aftermath of a battlefield, framing the landscape through the truncated branches of a ravaged, blackened tree as if to underscore the extent of the damage.
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