Yolanda Andrade est née le 22 mai 1950 à Villahermosa au Mexique.
Yolanda studied at the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York during the 1970′s. Later she honed her skills in the film industry and as a free-lance photographer working for various magazines. She used this experience as a professor of photography at the Centro de la Imagen, Tecnologico de Monterrey, and the Escuela de Fotografia Nacho Lopez.
Yolanda established herself in the Mexican and international art scene during the 1990s, with a grant from the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and multiple awards and grants from the Fondo Nacional paral la Cultura y las Artes (FONCA). Her work is exhibited widely and has been seen in Europe, Japan, and the United States.
Yolanda was first known for her black and white photographs of Mexican culture and street life. Her work has a steady yet subtle sociological component: tracing the influences of Mexican media in popular arts and urban culture. In 2003, after nearly 25 years of striclty using film, she started using a digital camera and incorporated color into her work. At this stage she also looked beyond Mexico to Europe and India, and her work gained a new energy and a youthful perspective (look at the water lily image below!). If not for a continued search of the magical in the mundane, it is sometimes hard to believe her work in color is from the same photographer as before.
Her work both in color and in black and white is full of Mexican iconography. La Muerte and Christ are repeated often and leads to an inevitable air of “Mexicanness” in her work. In black and white the effect is poetically documentary. In color it is sometimes quirky, and at times seemingly naive, but close inspection reveals a meticulous eye for composition and symbolism.
