Dulce Pinzón was born in Mexico City in 1974. She studied Mass Media Communications at the Universidad de Las Americas in Puebla Mexico and Photography at Indiana University in Pennsylvania. In 1995 she moved to New York where she studied at The International Center of Photography.
Her work has been published and collected internationally. In 2001 her photos were used for the cover of a publication of Howard Zinn’s book “A People’s History of the United States”. In 2002 Dulce won the prestigious Jovenes Creadores/FONCA grant in Mexico for her work. In 2006 she won an Honorific Mention in the Santa Fe project competition and she won the 12th edition of the Mexican Biennial of El Centro de La Imagen. Dulce was a 2006 fellow in Photography from the New York Foundation for the Arts and a 2007 for the Bronx Museum program Artist in the Market Place and a Ford Foundation grantee in 2008.
The real story of the Superheroes
In our MIA Virtual Museum, we featured her work called ‘The real story of the Superheroes’: After September 11, the notion of the “hero” began to rear its head in the public consciousness more and more frequently. The notion served a necessity in a time of national and global crisis to acknowledge those who showed extraordinary courage or determination in the face of danger, sometimes even sacrificing their lives in an attempt to save others. However, in the whirlwind of journalism surrounding these deservedly front-page disasters and emergencies, it is easy to take for granted the heroes who sacrifice immeasurable life and labor in their day to day lives for the good of others, but do so in a somewhat less spectacular setting.
The Mexican immigrant worker in New York is a perfect example of the hero who has gone unnoticed. It is common for a Mexican worker in New York to work extraordinary hours in extreme conditions for very low wages which are saved at great cost and sacrifice and sent to families and communities in Mexico who rely on them to survive.
The Mexican economy has quietly become dependent on the money sent from workers in the US. Conversely, the US economy has quietly become dependent on the labor of Mexican immigrants. Along with the depth of their sacrifice, it is the quietness of this dependence which makes Mexican immigrant workers a subject of interest.
The principal objective of this series is to pay homage to these brave and determined men and women that somehow manage, without the help of any supernatural power, to withstand extreme conditions of labor in order to help their families and communities survive and prosper. This project consists of 20 color photographs of Mexican and Latino immigrants dressed in the costumes of popular American and Mexican superheroes. Each photo pictures the worker/superhero in their work environment, and is accompanied by a short text including the worker’s name, their hometown, the number of years they have been working in New York, and the amount of money they send to their families each week.
Dulce won The Gaea Foundation/Sea Change Residencies Award in 2010 and in 2011 the PERRIER acquisition price in Zona Maco Mexico. In 2012 she was invited to take part at the renowned photography festival ‘Les Rencontres D’Arles Photographie’ in France, this participation gave her a nomination for the prestigious Prix Pictet; the same year she got a honorific mention at the 10th edition of the FEMSA biennial. Her book “The real story of The Superheroes ” was published in 2012 in 3 languages: English, Spanish and French by Editorial RM with the support of the Cultural Co-inversion program of FONCA. Dulce is currently a recipient of Mexico’s prestigious Endowment Of the Arts SNCA/FONCA fellowship (2014-2017)
Dulce lives and works between Mexico and New York.