An election poster can be mutilated, carelessly or mischievously pasted, torn to pieces, scratched, scribbled on,
hung upside down, sprayed over or modified and defaced in many other ways, and this is just what some mexican
voters have done during the presidential election in 2000.
It then took a group of professional graphic designers sensitive to the beauty of street art,
and being aware of Roman Cieslewicz's famous interview on the esthetics of poster design,
to photographically document the commotion. But I think having fun was their primary motive, and
Alejandro Magallanes, one of the authors,
told me that "We did not want to make any political statement or take sides with any party,
except maybe to show what people think about politics or politicians".
The book has little text, in fact I can quote it here in it's full extent:
Esta publicacion, al igual que sus autores, no tienen vinculos con ningun partido politico.
Todas las fotografias fueron tomadas en la Ciudad de Mexico antes de la dia de las elecciones del 2 de julio 2000,
y aparecen tal como las encontramos.
Autorizamos la reproducion parcial o total de este obra, siempre y cuando se cite la fuente.
Este libro es una produccion de Fuera de Registro con la colaboracion de Eduardo Barrera,
Erick Beltran, Ana Bertha Madrid, Alejandro Magallanes, Hector Montes de Oca, Claudia Prado,
Sebastian Rodriguez Romo, Leonel Sagahon y Mauricio Volpi.
Ciudad de Mexico, junio de 2000
I was happy to meet a group of people who share my passion for real life posters
and I think they made a great little book.
Erick Beltran, one of the authors, sent the following
comment on the above review from Paris, where he is continuing his work on street posters:
Our main interest was to give a voice to people who usually don't have one.
It IS a political statement but we didn't take sides with any political party cause.
We choose the other side of the politics: the people who are supossed to
support the whole structure. The moment of an election is supposed to be a
democratical party (the tv and the medias describe it like this) everyone is
invited but the normal people who vote.
That is why we sent "No Anunciar" to the parties, to the president, to all
medias, to all politicals critics, to the politicians who appeard in the
book, and (of course) to people in streets (2000 in the Zocalo, 1000 in
Coyoacan).
