Yael Martínez

Yael Martínez, Magnum Photos

A Mixtec elder on the Cerro de la Garza in Guerrero, Mexico. Every year, on 31 December 2021, Mixtecs climb the hill to perform rituals commemorating the end and beginning of a life cycle. They perform processions, dances, and other Indigenous spiritual practices to demonstrate their gratitude to the earth.

Yael Martínez is a Mexican photographer who became a Magnum Photos full member in 2020. His work addresses fractured communities in his native Mexico. He often works symbolically to evoke a sense of emptiness, absence, and pain suffered by those affected by organized crime in the region.

Martínez was a grantee of the Magnum Foundation in the grants: Emergency Fund and On Religion in 2016- 2017. He was a recipient of the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography in 2019, a fellow of the Photography and Social Justice Program of The Magnum Foundation in 2019, and became a member of Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte, Mexico in 2020.

His work has been featured in group shows in America, Europe, Africa and Asia, and belongs to the collections of the International Center of Photography, the Bronx Documentary Center, the Toledo / INBA Collection, and Fundación Televisa. His work has been published by The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg news, Lens - The New York Times, Time, Vogue Italia, Vrij Nederland, Aperture among others.