Gato Negro Ediciones
By remaining inside the economically-amicable yet unconstrained process that is risograph printing, an archive of over 220 titles has been successfully called into life ever since its inception.
From political manifests to art theory and prose, the books of Gato Negro do not wish to deconstruct reality through ornamental distractions that lately seem to have become an inevitable requisite within the modern history of publishing. Instead, Gato Negro embraces the deliberately-chosen content in its most primal form: straightforward and entire. And therefore, ever-growing in context.
The outcome of each publication is a dialogue between reader and creator — an ecological construction of selfhood that distills collective contemplation while all we do is live.
Sample spread of Cherán. Los árboles mueren de pie. This photobook narrates the uprising of a Purepecha community in Cherán, Michoacán, Mexico, from an artistic perspective, based on an archive of 5,000 images collected by the chilean collective Ritual Inhabitual in collaboration with the community.Here, a photographic investigation, a scientific
research, a pre-Columbian fairy tale and an encounter between the photographed and the artists converge. In this mixture of violence and existence, in these stories of lives devastated by the greed of industrialists and corrupt governments, and by the
programmed destruction of the environment, the reader is immersed in the streets of Chéran, in the skin of revolutionary women, and in what it means to belong to an indigenous community in the 21st century.
Sample book spread of Realidad, Realidad, Realidad. Realidad, This is a book split into two parts. The first one is the autobiography of Jennifer Leyva Corazón Indomable: the story of a Purépecha woman forced to survive in a society that not only marginalizes her because of her addictions, but also seeks to erase her trans identity. Her personal journey is interwoven with the collective resistance of Cherán, Michoacán, México, a town that rose up in arms against the State’s inaction in the face of organized crime, defending its Indigenous identity.
Over six years, the Chilean collective Ritual Inhabitual
(Tito González García and Florencia Grisanti) interviewed
Jenny in Cherán. From that encounter emerged a fierce
and lucid narrative, told in her own voice.
The second part, from which this photo belongs to,
gathers photographs taken during that same period.
These images document Cherán’s festive calendar
—a blend of religious celebrations and Purépecha rituals—
and the traditional world where Jenny lived and grew up.
Sample spread of Omen. Chasing the ghost, the traces of oblivion and the echoes of what was and is no longer, Omen represents a revision and recontextualization of a part of the photographic archive of the Farm Security Administration (1935-1944) housed in the New York Public Library. The book works simultaneously as a reflection of the distressing reality of the United States today and as an instrument for reflection on how historical and documentary photography is interpreted and understood.
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