Bienal Internacional de Fotografía de Puerto Rico

This poster was created for the Bienal Internacional de Fotografía de Puerto Rico, held at the Museo de las Américas beginning in September 2002. The Bienal represented Puerto Rico’s effort to place photography—historically overshadowed by printmaking—on equal footing within the island’s cultural institutions. By the early 2000s, photography in Puerto Rico had evolved beyond documentary work, expanding toward conceptual, experimental, and mixed-media approaches. Exhibitions like this Bienal highlighted Puerto Rico’s growing role in international photographic dialogue, showcasing artists who merged Caribbean identity with global visual languages.

The minimalist composition, centered on a vibrant geometric core floating in a vast blue field, reflects a shift in poster design of the period: a move toward abstraction, symbolism, and compositional restraint. This aesthetic paralleled 2000s Puerto Rican museum culture, which increasingly embraced modernist identities and global graphic trends. Alonso’s choice of bold color fields and a single abstract focal point is a nod to both photographic framing and the idea of the “image window,” reinforcing the Bienal’s purpose—inviting viewers to reconsider the power and evolution of images within Puerto Rico.