Resumé M.M.

I was born during the Second World War in Bonn, Germany, and educated at the 11th. century monastery Kloster Steinfeld in the humanistic tradition. After concluding my photographic apprenticeship in Cologne, the Photokina City, I worked as assistant to the outstanding industrial photographer Ludwig Windstosser in Stuttgart on assignments to steel mills and related technologies all over West Germany.

In late 1967 I arrived in Mexico and, fascinated by what I saw, did a self assigned work in color on the Mixtec Indian women of Oaxaca and another on Death in Mexico. Both remained unpublished for many years. Since 1969 I live in Mexico City, where I maintained myself during the seventies with translations, simultaneous interpretation and freelance photography.

In 1973, on the occasion of the Skylab flights, I visited the NASA Johnson Space Center, and was profoundly impressed by the phenomenon of weightlessness and humans living in space. In a later visit to the JSC I had the opportunity to interview Dr. Joseph Kerwin, a Skylab astronaut and one of the first human beings, who lived for months in space. During the following 8 years I continued to visit the JSC and European Space Agency Centers in Paris and Noordwijc on trips of exploration and learning. During my visits to these centers I interviewed engineers, scientists and astronauts and photographed selected technologies. The resulting interviews and articles were published in a variety of Mexican media and in Spaceflight, the magazine of the British Interplanetary Society, which made me a Fellow in the early eighties. During the late seventies and early eighties I gave illustrated talks on Man in Space at universities and cultural institutions in Mexico City. Parallel to the real exploration of the Solar System during the seventies I photographed in color and infrared color the coasts of Baja California and Oaxaca simulating land and seascapes of other planets. In 1982, parallel to a series of lectures by astronomers on the Solar System and my talk on Man in Space I exhibited Paisajes Planetarios (Planetary Landscapes ) at the Museo de Ciencias y Arte of the Autonomous National University of Mexico.

Since the eighties I specialize in industrial & architectural photography, often for annual reports and corporate publications. In 1994 I opened the Studio M.M. in the south of Mexico City. From 1994 to 1995 I gave lectures in Mexico City on the use of Hasselblad cameras in architecture and industry, which I illustrated with my images of copper mines and container transport by ship and truck, of cement, chemical, construction, electrical, automobil, pharmaceutical, petrochemical and telecommunications industries, of command posts, clean rooms, diagnostic centers and laboratories, and my photographs of houses and offices for Mexican architects and interior design firms.

Since the mid nineties I work frequently for the pharmaceutical, automobile and other high tech industries. In 1997 I began to work digitally and since the turn of the century we deliver all assignments digitally.

In 2001 I displayed at the Centro Fotográfico Álvarez Bravo in Oaxaca City Ñundeui, at the foot of the sky, the first digital exhibition of this center.

México City, February 10th. 2004
 
Mario Mutschlechner