Photographing The Mexican Revolution

Download or read book Photographing the Mexican Revolution written by John Mraz and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2012-04-18 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mexican Revolution of 1910–1920 is among the world’s most visually documented revolutions. Coinciding with the birth of filmmaking and the increased mobility offered by the reflex camera, it received extraordinary coverage by photographers and cineastes—commercial and amateur, national and international. Many images of the Revolution remain iconic to this day—Francisco Villa galloping toward the camera; Villa lolling in the presidential chair next to Emiliano Zapata; and Zapata standing stolidly in charro raiment with a carbine in one hand and the other hand on a sword, to mention only a few. But the identities of those who created the thousands of extant images of the Mexican Revolution, and what their purposes were, remain a huge puzzle because photographers constantly plagiarized each other’s images. In this pathfinding book, acclaimed photography historian John Mraz carries out a monumental analysis of photographs produced during the Mexican Revolution, focusing primarily on those made by Mexicans, in order to discover who took the images and why, to what ends, with what intentions, and for whom. He explores how photographers expressed their commitments visually, what aesthetic strategies they employed, and which identifications and identities they forged. Mraz demonstrates that, contrary to the myth that Agustín Víctor Casasola was “the photographer of the Revolution,” there were many who covered the long civil war, including women. He shows that specific photographers can even be linked to the contending forces and reveals a pattern of commitment that has been little commented upon in previous studies (and completely unexplored in the photography of other revolutions).

Download or read book Photographing the Mexican Revolution written by John Mraz and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2012-05-02 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mexican Revolution of 1910–1920 is among the world’s most visually documented revolutions. Coinciding with the birth of filmmaking and the increased mobility offered by the reflex camera, it received extraordinary coverage by photographers and cineastes—commercial and amateur, national and international. Many images of the Revolution remain iconic to this day—Francisco Villa galloping toward the camera; Villa lolling in the presidential chair next to Emiliano Zapata; and Zapata standing stolidly in charro raiment with a carbine in one hand and the other hand on a sword, to mention only a few. But the identities of those who created the thousands of extant images of the Mexican Revolution, and what their purposes were, remain a huge puzzle because photographers constantly plagiarized each other’s images. In this pathfinding book, acclaimed photography historian John Mraz carries out a monumental analysis of photographs produced during the Mexican Revolution, focusing primarily on those made by Mexicans, in order to discover who took the images and why, to what ends, with what intentions, and for whom. He explores how photographers expressed their commitments visually, what aesthetic strategies they employed, and which identifications and identities they forged. Mraz demonstrates that, contrary to the myth that Agustín Víctor Casasola was “the photographer of the Revolution,” there were many who covered the long civil war, including women. He shows that specific photographers can even be linked to the contending forces and reveals a pattern of commitment that has been little commented upon in previous studies (and completely unexplored in the photography of other revolutions).

Download or read book Mexico, the Revolution and Beyond written by Agustín Víctor Casasola and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Agustín Victor Casasola photographed everyone of consequence in Mexico at the time of the revolution, from Francisco (Pancho) Villa, Emiliano Zapata and the exiled Russian leader Leon Trotsky to artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. For this splendid collection of Casasola's work, the noted American author Pete Hamill has written a rich essay on the photographer and the Mexico he pictured so well.

Download or read book Mexican Suite written by Olivier Debroise and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2001-03-15 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Now this publication is available in English as Mexican Suite. Olivier Debroise and Stella de Sa Rego have revised this edition to include more current material and explanatory notes for an audience less familiar with Mexican history. They have also eliminated some of the general history of photography and added more of the early history of photography in Mexico, as well as many new, previously unpublished images. The book is organized both chronologically and thematically, which allows viewer/readers to follow the evolution of major photographic genres and styles. Debroise also examines the role of photography in the development of modern Mexico and the influence of prominent foreign photographers such as Edward Weston, Tina Modotti, and Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Download or read book Nacho Lopez, Mexican Photographer written by John Mraz and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annotation Photographer Nacho Lopez was Mexico's Eugene Smith, fusing social commitment with searing imagery to dramatize the plight of the helpless, the poor, and the marginalized in the pages of glossy illustrated magazines. Even today, Lopez's photographs forcefully belie the picturesque exoticism that is invariably presented as the essence of Mexico. In Nacho Lopez, Mexican Photographer, John Mraz offers the first full-length study in English of this influential photojournalist and provides a close visual analysis of more than fifty of Lopez's most important photographs. Mraz first sets Lopez's work in the historical and cultural context of the authoritarian presidentialism that characterized Mexican politics in the 1950s, the cult of wealth and celebrity promoted by Mexico's professional photographers, and the government's attempts to modernize and industrialize Mexico at almost any cost. Mraz skillfully explores the implications of Lopez's imagery in this setting: the extent to which his photographs might constitute further victimization of his downtrodden subjects, the relationship between them and the middle-class readers of the magazines for which Lopez worked, and the success with which his photographs challenged Mexico's economic and political structures. Mraz contrasts the photos Lopez took with those that were selected by his editors for publication. He also compares Lopez's images with his theories about documentary photography, and considers Lopez's photographs alongside the work of Robert Capa, Dorothea Lange, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Sebastiao Salgado. Lopez's imagery is further analyzed in relation to the Mexican Golden Age cinema inspired by Sergei Eisenstein, the pioneeringdigital imagery of Pedro Meyer, and the work of Manuel Alvarez Bravo, who Mraz provocatively argues was the first Mexican photographer to take an anti-picturesque stance. The definitive English-language assessment of Nacho Lo.

Download or read book Constructing the Image of the Mexican Revolution written by Zuzana M. Pick and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-01-15 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With a cast ranging from Pancho Villa to Dolores del Río and Tina Modotti, Constructing the Image of the Mexican Revolution demonstrates the crucial role played by Mexican and foreign visual artists in revolutionizing Mexico's twentieth-century national iconography. Investigating the convergence of cinema, photography, painting, and other graphic arts in this process, Zuzana Pick illuminates how the Mexican Revolution's timeline (1910-1917) corresponds with the emergence of media culture and modernity. Drawing on twelve foundational films from Que Viva Mexico! (1931-1932) to And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself (2003), Pick proposes that cinematic images reflect the image repertoire produced during the revolution, often playing on existing nationalist themes or on folkloric motifs designed for export. Ultimately illustrating the ways in which modernism reinvented existing signifiers of national identity, Constructing the Image of the Mexican Revolution unites historicity, aesthetics, and narrative to enrich our understanding of Mexicanidad.

Download or read book Timeless Mexico written by Susan Toomey Frost and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2011-10-15 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hugo Brehme created an idyllic vision of Mexico that influenced photography, film, and literature for a hundred years. His beautifully composed, timeless images of lo mexicano—cacti and pyramids, Indian children and marketplaces, colonial buildings and snow-capped volcanoes and peaks—were widely distributed and acclaimed both in Mexico and internationally. Noted critic Olivier Debroise characterized Brehme as "both the first modern photographer of Mexico and the last representative of its old guard and of a certain nineteenth-century vision." Working in Mexico from 1905 until his death in 1954, he was an early mentor to Mexico's most famous photographer, Manuel álvarez Bravo, and a significant influence on Golden Age filmmakers Gabriel Figueroa and Emilio "El Indio" Fernández. Brehme-esque imagery even appears in the work of American filmmaker John Ford and Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein. Timeless Mexico presents an outstanding selection of Hugo Brehme's photographs, ranging from imagery of the Mexican Revolution to scenic landscapes, colonial architecture, and the everyday life of indigenous peoples. Susan Toomey Frost, who has collected Brehme's photography for many years, provides an illuminating introduction to his life and work. She also describes his practice of printing and distributing his photographs as collectible postcards—a practice that, together with publication in countless books, magazines, and tourist brochures, gave Brehme's work the wide circulation that made his images of Mexico iconic. Art historian Stella de Sá Rego authoritatively discusses Brehme's place in the history of Mexican photography, especially within Pictorialism, as she reveals how a man from Eisenach, Germany, came to create an enduring visual mythology of the essence of Mexico.