Atlanta Photography Group (APG) is pleased to present The Navel of the Moon, a solo exhibition of photographs of Mexico by Enrique Samson, in the Ted & Gloria Maloof Gallery. This exhibition runs concurrently with our exhibition in the main gallery, Reverie.

Opening Reception: Saturday, June 1, 3 – 5pm
Exhibition Dates: June 1 – July 6, 2019
Artist Talk: Saturday, July 6, 2 – 3pm

The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. — T.S. Elliot

Enrique Samson’s The Navel of the Moon is an ongoing project inspired by his combined love for his country, the modernist aesthetics of the 20th Century, and “the inherently satisfying physical interaction with analog technology (which includes film photography that he mixes with digital post-processing).” This body of work has received multiple awards and has been published, exhibited, and purchased in Asia, Europe, North and South America.

“The most widely accepted etymology for the Aztec word Mexico is ‘the site at the navel of the moon.’ The transliteration is an attempt to encapsulate an Indian myth that delves into rich philosophical, religious and political intricacies—much like the nation the genesis of which it chronicles. I borrowed the name to title the series because Mexico to me has become precisely that: a complex and captivating land that I regretfully used to take for granted. This body of work is an ongoing, personal exploration of the cultural complexities of Mexico as viewed through the lens of one of its expatriate sons currently living in the U.S.”

“Mexican national values are rooted in unceasing juxtapositions like those of ancestral tradition and modernity, the temporal and the supernatural, the Native American and the European, good and evil: circumstances that coexist, collaborate and explode in a spectacle that often appears surreal to the nonnative eye. The series was thus born from my conscious desire to document and share the intricate weave of Mexican culture in a postmodern exploration of “Mexicanity” as defined in the context of the Mexican modernist renaissance movement of the early 20th Century. In the process, the images gradually surprised me by unveiling a deeper subconscious value as intimate and personal meditations about the places, people and feelings to which I have in the past remained oblivious due to my over familiarity with them.”

Enrique Samson

(b.1973, Mexico City)

Enrique Samson received his Master of Fine Art degree in photography from the Savannah College of Art and Design. He also recently completed a Certificate in Architectural Imagination at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He has a business degree by the Monterrey Institute of Technology in Mexico and is a former Fortune-500 marketing executive.

Raised in a family of architects, Samson runs his architecture and interiors photography practice based in Atlanta, where he resides with his wife and children. When time allows, he enjoys designing and teaching photography courses at the college level. In his words, “A good literacy in architecture and design are for me more than a personal interest but my family’s heritage and the natural way in which I directly relate to my clients’ needs.”