People of the Mud, Luis Alberto Rodriguez

People of the Mud is a powerful new series by Berlin-based US artist Luis Alberto Rodriguez, made collaboratively amongst the communities of County Wexford in Ireland, where ancient tradition and modern life rub shoulders daily.

With a background in professional dance, Rodriguez’s work pays tribute to the metaphorical weight of centuries of physical labour behind cultivating the landscape and maintaining cultural heritage. Images of scarred limbs and hands, from the field and from sport, function as a cartography of these bodies, as culture both shapes and is shaped by the individual. Elsewhere, we see the exaggerated glamour of modern female Irish dancers taken out of the glitzy ballrooms and into the fields, creating a rupture across time and space.

The People of the Mud by Berlin-based, US artist Luis Alberto Rodriguez is the product of an exquisite body of work created while on a residency in Cow House Studios, Wexford, Ireland. Luis spent almost two months working on the topic of Cultural Heritage, as part of a residency hosted by PhotoIreland Festival, and co-funded by the EU Photographic Platform FUTURES, of which PhotoIreland Festival is the Irish partner. The Photobook was subsequently funded, designed and produced in 2019 by Lewis Chaplin and Sarah Piegay Espenon of Loose Joints publishing.

Published by Loose Joints
Hardcover with Softcover Slipcase
114 pages
235 x 287 mm
ISBN 9781912719143