Obsidiana Magazine 002. Armando Salas Portugal

A central figure in 20th-century Mexican photography, Armando Salas Portugal profoundly transformed the visual representation of Mexico's landscape, architecture, and pre-Hispanic heritage. Beginning his career in 1934, his work stands out for a remarkable combination of technical precision and aesthetic sensibility, the result of his chemistry studies at UCLA and a life dedicated to exploring the Mexican territory.

A key collaborator of Luis Barragán, Salas Portugal helped build a modern vision of Mexican architecture that achieved international recognition. His photographic work, deeply rooted in national identity, shaped a modern visual language in which nature, geometry, and symbolism coexist with profound poetic resonance.

Within Armando Salas Portugal's vast photographic archive is a unique series that holds a prominent place in the history of 20th-century experimental photography. Developed between 1967 and 1971, this collection belongs to the realm of abstract photography, not only for its innovative technical approach but also for its profound conceptual depth. Christened by the artist himself as "Photography of Thoughts," the series represents a break with traditional canons of the medium, completely dispensing with the use of the camera and transferring visual exploration to the laboratory, where chemistry and light become the main creative agents.

Salas Portugal's Photography of Thoughts is part of an experimental tradition that questions conventional notions of photography as a document or visual testimony. Instead, it is oriented towards an exploration of the medium in its purest state. In this sense, his work reflects on the limits of representation and on the potential of the photographic medium to become an autonomous space of artistic expression, where matter and light shape a poetics of perception and abstraction.