Michel Hurst: Arale: Love and Death in Mexico City

"Through his camera, we see a Mexico that is racked with pain and beset with poverty, but is buoyed by the perpetual engine of eroticism and the promise of spiritual grace." -Chris Wiley

This volume is the debut book of photographs by the late photographer and collector Michel Hurst (1948-2023). Made in and around his adopted home of Mexico City over a period of roughly six years, arale's photographs pulse with the lifeblood of a country marred by suffering but consistently renewed by the promise of redemption. Through Hurst's lens, the reader absorbs ancient rituals and new cults, beauty and degradation, danger and tenderness, lust and longing. With the flinty eye of a hard-bitten street photographer and the soft touch of an aesthete, Hurst shows us not just Mexico but the human condition itself. This monograph includes an introduction by acclaimed photographer and activist Nan Goldin, an essay by New Yorker photography critic Chris Wiley and an afterword by Hurst's husband of 40 years, Robert Swope.