b.1950, Lebanon

In the 1980s, in a photographic studio in Mexico City, Pedro Slim began developing what would become the series From the street to the studio. Acclaimed for documenting male beauty at a time in which it was distanced from mainstream Mexican culture, Slim photographs those excluded from representation. Attentive to light and form, Slim records the markings on these male bodies; tattoos, muscles, veins, and jewellery. Rendered in high-contrast black-and-white images, Slim’s subjects – workers, tradesmen, among those disregarded by Mexico’s highly stratified and classist society – appear self-possessed and knowing, participating in a relational intimacy with camera and photographer.