Born in Mexico City, Mexico, Dulce Pinzón is a famous Mexican artist whose photography is heavily influenced by themes of immigration, nostalgia, and questions of identity. Her artwork is so touching and exceptional, to the point where Forbes Magazine named her “one of the 50 most creative Mexicans in the world” and Vogue Magazine identified her as one of the “8 Mexican female photographers who are breaking through a global level.” Her artwork speaks to millions of immigrants across the United States, especially her photography collection from 2006. In her collection “The Real Story of Superheroes” Pinzón captures photographs of immigrants in New York City dressed as superheroes while working their jobs. Most of the people she captured were immigrants from the same place as her: Puebla, Mexico. Her artistic choice of depicting everyday hard-working people in New York as recognizable superheroes puts an emphasis on how important immigrants are to the backbone of society. She made this collection of art to pay a sense of tribute to hard workers who largely go unnoticed for their sacrifices and labor in this country. In the picture above we can see “the Hulk” working to stock grocery stores with shipments; in another picture I listed below we can see a man dressed as “the thing” working in construction. In her artwork Pinzón sets to humanize immigrants; by showcasing that they are more than just statistics or stereotypes, they are real people who forget their own needs every day for a better life and are the reason society can properly function. Babysitters, construction workers, and food delivery workers— they all play a significant role in a stable society and should be commemorated for it. But Pinzón doesn’t just stop there; she takes it a step further to display just how heroic the subject of her photos truly are by stating in the caption of her photographs how much money they send back home to relatives. By doing so she cultivates a new level of nuance that urges audiences to see the never-ending selflessness our heroes have to offer. In essence, Pinzón captures photographs of courageous men and women to pay homage to the true heroes of the city that manage to survive unfair labor and forfeit their comfortableness to help both their communities—whether that be back home or the home they have learned to survive in.
