Ricas y famosas - Daniela Rossell

"The following pictures are not fiction". This sentence introduces a disturbing book of photographs about the super rich in Mexico in their huge, frequently enormously tacky mansions and luxury apartments. The women, occasionally also the men, pose in front of endless pools in the sun, model their newest designer clothes and show off their lifestyles far away from profane everyday business. At the same time, they present their art collections and pet their - mostly stuffed - animals.;For seven years, Daniela Rossell did not visit the poor in suburban slums but this minuscule minority, Mexico's millionaires, merging modern contemporary and classical Mexican documentary photography. Despite their shrill, gaudy contents, the photographs exude a calmness and precision, which endow the viewer with the necessary distance. The photographs play to different human instincts, from voyeuristic curiosity, to disgust, to naive awe about the diversity of human lifestyles in the 21st century.