Today, World Press Photo 2025 opens at the Franz Mayer Museum.

▲ Life and death in a country without constitutional rights , image by Salvadoran journalist Carlos Barrera, where Cecilia Abrego appears holding a T-shirt with photographs of her children, detained and imprisoned in May 2022.

Angel Vargas

La Jornada Newspaper, Thursday, July 31, 2025, p. 4

The independent organization World Press Photo (WPP), based in Amsterdam, Netherlands, is very clear about its position on the genocide in Gaza: Unfortunately, it is very difficult, and we join the call of all media outlets, because journalists are also dying of hunger while doing their work .

This was announced by Babette Warendorf, exhibitions director at the WPP Foundation, who is visiting Mexico to attend the opening of the World Press Photo 2025 exhibition, which opens today at the Franz Mayer Museum and runs through October 12.

During a media tour, the Dutch curator emphasized that for the second consecutive edition, the winning image of this competition relates to that conflict and its repercussions among the Palestinian civilian population.

"I'm afraid we're going to see a lot more photos of the Gaza war this year because it's not over yet ," he said, prompting reporters to ask him about WPP's position on Israel's military attacks on the Palestinians.

We focus a lot on press freedom, and we see that Gaza has been the deadliest conflict for journalists in the world. To date, more than 160 have been killed in Gaza. For us, the most important thing is that journalists have the freedom to work , he responded.

Earlier, at a press conference, Babette Warendorf warned that press freedom is deteriorating year after year around the world, and that, in this regard, Mexico remains one of the most dangerous countries for practicing journalism.

He mentioned a report by Reporters Without Borders, which ranks our country 124th out of 180 countries in press freedom, after more than 150 journalists have been murdered since 2000 and 28 have disappeared.

Another topic addressed by the WPP exhibitions director was the organization's 70th anniversary, which is being celebrated this year. She explained that, to mark the anniversary, they received additional funding to display their collection to the public and hire an archivist who is now working to put it in order.

In one of the most anticipated exhibitions at the Franz Mayer Museum (Hidalgo Avenue 45, Downtown), World Press Photo 2025 presents 144 of the most striking images of photojournalism and documentary photography captured in various corners of the planet throughout 2024.

The winners were selected from among 59,320 photos submitted by 3,778 photographers from 141 countries, evaluated by regional juries and then by an independent global jury.

The 2025 edition features 42 winning projects, nine more than the previous year, which, according to the organizers , represents a significant increase in the diversity of voices, regions, and approaches . However, unlike past editions, no Mexicans are included.

Divided into six sections, dedicated to each of the planet's geographical areas, the tour concludes with the winning image of the current edition of the WPP: Palestine , in which Gaza-born photographer Samar Abu Elouf captured her young compatriot Mahamoud Aljjour, a 9-year-old boy who lost both arms while escaping an Israeli attack with his family, brooding in a play of chiaroscuro.

Merry MacMasters

La Jornada Newspaper, Thursday, July 31, 2025, p. 5

Four years ago, Mercedes Oteyza, widow of Manuel Felguérez (1928-2020), donated 35 individual works and three portfolios, covering the period 1986-2019, to the Museo Nacional de la Estampa (Munae). Last year, Juan Aceves, son of the artist Gilberto Aceves Navarro (1931-2019), donated 329 works to the same museum.

Both gestures of generosity enliven the pair of exhibitions that will open on Saturday at the Munae: Manuel Felguérez Irruption: Mercedes Oteyza Donation , curated by Lilia Prado, and Obsessions in Motion: Graphic Flow by Gilberto Aceves Navarro , curated by Luis Ignacio Sáinz.

The first is complemented by three silkscreens from the folder Differences and Continuity , with 24 aphorisms by Juan García Ponce, which belongs to the Munae collection; three sculptures from Felguérez's workshop; and two of his latest oil paintings, which he made in 2020. Obsessions in Motion are joined by two acrylics on the theme of bullfighting, from the Museum of Modern Art (MAM), a venue preparing the exhibition Becoming a Line , featuring work by Aceves Navarro, for next October.

After reviewing the four decades of work represented in the donation, Prado refers to Felguérez as an explorer and visionary . "The Zacatecas artist is always relevant because we all have an abstract mindset ," he tells La Jornada . The master left his mark on both modern and contemporary art . A member of the Rupture Generation, he said that it was more of an opening toward new languages .

For the curator of the Munae, another constant in Felguérez's production is his irruption , hence the title of the exhibition, because although he trained in sculpture in Europe, he apparently later moved to painting for practical reasons, although he never stopped creating graphic art . In fact, the artist worked in graphic art in a wide variety of workshops, such as Ediciones Multiarte, Tiempo Extra Editores, the Intaglio Graphic Workshop at the Centro Cultural Estación Indianilla, and the Taller Jesusa, not to mention the engraving workshop at the Manuel Felguérez Museum of Abstract Art in Zacatecas.

The exhibition is divided into three thematic sections that refer to constructive geometry, organic geometry, and matter and gestures. To set the scene for the entire work, Felguérez's work table is also included , just as he left it , along with his famous pipe.

▲ Leda (1987), sugar etching and aquatint by Manuel Felguérez, and Untitled Piece (Don Felipe II and His Painter) (2000), aquatint and etching by Gilberto Aceves Navarro. Photo courtesy of Munae/Inbal

Wandering without a compass

Obsessions in Motion: Graphic Flow by Gilberto Aceves Navarro comprises a selection of 75 prints, five engraving plates and the two oil paintings from the MAM, 82 works in total in techniques and presentations such as electrostatic printing, silkscreen printing, digital graphics, etching, drypoint, aquatint, burin engraving and monotype.

For Luis Ignacio Sáinz, in the forest of gouges and burins, and the parade of pigments, Aceves Navarro wanders without a compass, but with a direction as Gilberto Owen would mark, defying the conventions of good consciences. He joyfully pursues a playful meaning for his refined imagery. He does so convinced that the relevance of art lies, literally nestles, in its treasured capacity for surprise. That's why he strives to seek out those small, subtle delights that are transgressions: the crimes of a thinking sensibility .

According to the specialist, Aceves Navarro was a liberal in every sense of the word. A critical democrat, he was always concerned with social, indigenous, working-class, and religious, ethnic, and sexual minority causes . His body of work is vast , with women at the forefront, toward whom he always had an ambivalent attitude of fascination and admiration, though also with certain misogynistic touches, a trait of his generation and his personal biography .

The title of the exhibition reflects the fact that "the work of reflection and research that Aceves Navarro carries out to engrave a plate and print a print is expressed in the expression "Obsessions in Motion ," which refers to the total dedication to a theme-object-situation-entity until it is completely broken down and mastered, carrying out such activities dynamically. This means that what is represented is transformed as it moves through space."

The second part of the title, Graphic Flow , alludes to the almost infinite number of tests, sketches and drawings that Aceves Navarro makes of each image chosen to be engraved on the metal plate and printed on the paper that circulates in the printing press .

Both exhibitions will open on Saturday at 1 p.m. at the National Print Museum (Hidalgo Avenue 39, Plaza de la Santa Veracruz, Historic Center).