The Etherton Gallery is having its first exhibition of the 2010-2011 season, Ojos bien abiertos/Eyes Wide Open opening September 7 and running through November 6, 2010.

It is part of a yearlong celebration of Etherton Gallery’s 30^th Anniversary.  The show features sgrafitto drawings by Alice Leora Briggs, hand-colored gelatin silver photographs by Guatemalan photographer, Luis Gonzalez Palma and documentary photographs by Mexican photographer Rodrigo Moya. Together these artists give the viewer access to intimate moments, insider views and documentary images that challenge the cultural myths and historical understanding that have conditioned our appraisal of Latin America.

Coral by Luis Gonzalez Palma

The Etherton Gallery will host an artist reception Saturday, September 11, 7-10 pm at the gallery. Luis Gonzalez Palma, who lives in Argentina, is traveling to Tucson in one of his few trips to the United States this year, to attend the reception and will speak at the Center for Creative Photography the next day.

Observar en Silencio by Alice Leora Briggs

Etherton Gallery will show new work by Alice Leora Briggs as well as a number of works from Dreamland: The Way Out of Juarez, a collaboration with writer Charles Bowden, which she describes as part “illuminated manuscript” and part “crime blotter.” Briggs’ sgraffito drawings reveal the otherwise untold story of the victims, bystanders, and collaborators in the Juarez drug wars.  Images from a series of postage stamp styled drawings like Silencio make clear that sins of omission are in fact political acts that can have the same deadly consequences as sins of commission, regardless of who perpetrates them.

Eyes Wide Open showcases work by Palma, including photographs from the series, Your Gaze Distorts Me Without Knowing It (translated from Spanish), which features portraits of young women with bleached, riveting eyes. The series, inspired by Portuguese poet, Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935), articulates Palma’s belief that, “when we see, we do not see what we see, we see who we are.”  In Palma’s words these portraits  “. . . support an imagined gaze, to establish a relation that does not exist in reality, but does create its own reality.”

LaPesca Milagrosa by Rodrigo Moya

Working in the tradition of Henri Cartier Bresson and Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Mexican photographer Rodrigo Moya covered political unrest throughout Latin America during the 1950s and 1960s. Part photojournalist, part street photographer, Moya  brought the human cost of civil and military uprisings and the people who lived through these turbulent times to the pages of magazines such as Impacto, El Espectador, Politica, Sucesos and Siempre! Moya documents not only the newsworthy event, he provides us with the insider’s view, as though his subjects were waiting for his camera. Eyes Wide Open features a selection of Moya’s most iconic images from this period, including his photographs of the charismatic Che Guevara.

Etherton Gallery will host an artist reception at the gallery Saturday, September 11, 7 to 10 pm. Luis Gonzalez Palma and Alice Leora Briggs will attend.  The following day, September 12 at 2 pm, Luis Gonzalez Palma will give a talk about his work at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona.

Etherton Gallery is located in SoCo at 135 South 6th Avenue in downtown Tucson, AZ 85701. Regular business hours are Tuesday — Saturday, 11 am-5 pm and by appointment. For more information, contact the gallery at (520) 624-7370 or info@ethertongallery.com