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).

Photographing the Mexican Revolution: Commitments, Testimonies, Icons (The William and Bettye Nowlin Series in Art, History, and Culture of the Western Hemisphere)

Arts & Photography

Mraz, John

Photography & Video

University of Texas Press

Nacho Lopez, Mexican Photographer (Volume 14) (Visible Evidence)

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 Lopez's career, this volume also explores such broader topics as the nature of the photographic essay and the role of the media in effecting social change.

Individual Artists

Univ. of Minnesota Press

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.

Looking for Mexico: Modern Visual Culture and National Identity

In Looking for Mexico, a leading historian of visual culture, John Mraz, provides a panoramic view of Mexico’s modern visual culture from the U.S. invasion of 1847 to the present. Along the way, he illuminates the powerful role of photographs, films, illustrated magazines, and image-filled history books in the construction of national identity, showing how Mexicans have both made themselves and been made with the webs of significance spun by modern media. Central to Mraz’s book is photography, which was distributed widely throughout Mexico in the form of cartes-de-visite, postcards, and illustrated magazines. Mraz analyzes the work of a broad range of photographers, including Guillermo Kahlo, Winfield Scott, Hugo Brehme, Agustín Víctor Casasola, Tina Modotti, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Héctor García, Pedro Meyer, and the New Photojournalists. He also examines representations of Mexico’s past in the country’s influential picture histories: popular, large-format, multivolume series replete with thousands of photographs and an assortment of texts.Turning to film, Mraz compares portrayals of the Mexican Revolution by Fernando de Fuentes to the later movies of Emilio Fernández and Gabriel Figueroa. He considers major stars of Golden Age cinema as gender archetypes for mexicanidad, juxtaposing the charros (hacienda cowboys) embodied by Pedro Infante, Pedro Armendáriz, and Jorge Negrete with the effacing women: the mother, Indian, and shrew as played by Sara García, Dolores del Río, and María Félix. Mraz also analyzes the leading comedians of the Mexican screen, representations of the 1968 student revolt, and depictions of Frida Kahlo in films made by Paul Leduc and Julie Taymor. Filled with more than fifty illustrations, Looking for Mexico is an exuberant plunge into Mexico’s national identity, its visual culture, and the connections between the two.

Duke University Press Books

In Looking for Mexico, a leading historian of visual culture, John Mraz, provides a panoramic view of Mexico’s modern visual culture from the U.S. invasion of 1847 to the present. Along the way, he illuminates the powerful role of photographs, films, illustrated magazines, and image-filled history books in the construction of national identity, showing how Mexicans have both made themselves and been made with the webs of significance spun by modern media. Central to Mraz’s book is photography, which was distributed widely throughout Mexico in the form of cartes-de-visite, postcards, and illustrated magazines. Mraz analyzes the work of a broad range of photographers, including Guillermo Kahlo, Winfield Scott, Hugo Brehme, Agustín Víctor Casasola, Tina Modotti, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Héctor García, Pedro Meyer, and the New Photojournalists. He also examines representations of Mexico’s past in the country’s influential picture histories: popular, large-format, multivolume series replete with thousands of photographs and an assortment of texts.
Turning to film, Mraz compares portrayals of the Mexican Revolution by Fernando de Fuentes to the later movies of Emilio Fernández and Gabriel Figueroa. He considers major stars of Golden Age cinema as gender archetypes for mexicanidad, juxtaposing the charros (hacienda cowboys) embodied by Pedro Infante, Pedro Armendáriz, and Jorge Negrete with the effacing women: the mother, Indian, and shrew as played by Sara García, Dolores del Río, and María Félix. Mraz also analyzes the leading comedians of the Mexican screen, representations of the 1968 student revolt, and depictions of Frida Kahlo in films made by Paul Leduc and Julie Taymor. Filled with more than fifty illustrations, Looking for Mexico is an exuberant plunge into Mexico’s national identity, its visual culture, and the connections between the two.

History and Modern Media: A Personal Journey (Critical Mexican Studies)

In History and Modern Media, John Mraz largely focuses on Mexican photography and his innovative methodology that examines historical photographs by employing the concepts of genre and function. He developed this method in extensive work on photojournalism; it is tested here through examining two genres: Indianist imagery as an expression of imperial, neo-colonizing, and decolonizing photography, and progressive photography as embodied in worker and laborist imagery, as well as feminist and decolonizing visuality. The book interweaves an autobiographical narrative with concrete research. Mraz describes the resistance he encountered in US academia to this new way of showing and describing the past in films and photographs, as well as some illuminating experiences as a visiting professor at several US universities. More importantly, he reflects on what it has meant to move to Mexico and become a Mexican. Mexico is home to a thriving school of photohistorians perhaps unequaled in the world. Some were trained in art history, and a few continue to pursue that discipline. However, the great majority work from the discipline known as "photohistory" which focuses on vernacular photographs made outside of artistic intentions. A central premise of the book is that knowing the cultures of the past and of the other is crucial in societies dominated by short-term and parochial thinking, and that today's hyper-audiovisuality requires historians to use modern media to offer their knowledge as alternatives to the "perpetual present" in which we live.

Vanderbilt Univ Pr

Review\n"Daring, thought-provoking, and extremely readable. . . . A major contribution in itself, but also of special interest in relation to the importance of Mraz's work to all scholars of Mexican history and visual culture." 
--John Lear, author of Picturing the Proletariat: Artists and Labor in Revolutionary Mexico, 1908-1940\n"Very few intellectuals have the genius to work beyond their training and create something new. John Mraz is one of them." 
--James Krippner, author of Rereading the Conquest: Power, Politics, and the History of Early Colonial Michoacán, Mexico, 1521-1565 and Paul Strand in Mexico\nIn History and Modern Media, John Mraz largely focuses on Mexican photography and his innovative methodology that examines historical photographs by employing the concepts of genre and function. He developed this method in extensive work on photojournalism; it is tested here through examining two genres: Indianist imagery as an expression of imperial, neo-colonizing, and decolonizing photography, and progressive photography as embodied in worker and laborist imagery, as well as feminist and decolonizing visuality. The book interweaves an autobiographical narrative with concrete research. Mraz describes the resistance he encountered in US academia to this new way of showing and describing the past in films and photographs, as well as some illuminating experiences as a visiting professor at several US universities. More importantly, he reflects on what it has meant to move to Mexico and become a Mexican. Mexico is home to a thriving school of photohistorians perhaps unequaled in the world. Some were trained in art history, and a few continue to pursue that discipline. However, the great majority work from the discipline known as &#34;photohistory&#34; which focuses on vernacular photographs made outside of artistic intentions. A central premise of the book is that knowing the cultures of the past and of the other is crucial in societies dominated by short-term and parochial thinking, and that today&#39;s hyper-audiovisuality requires historians to use modern media to offer their knowledge as alternatives to the &#34;perpetual present&#34; in which we live.

Uprooted: Braceros in the Hermanos Mayo's Lens

From the Mayo Brothers archive in Mexico's Secretariate of Foreign Relations, the photos represent one of the most controversial cross-cultural subjects of their time: the Bracero Program. This landmark cofee table book offers 83 historical photos and an introduction documenting their importance.

Velez Storey, Jaime

Storey, Jamie Velvez

Arte Publico Pr

From the Mayo Brothers archive in Mexico's Secretariate of Foreign Relations, the photos represent one of the most controversial cross-cultural subjects of their time: the Braceros Program. This landmark coffee table book offers 83 historical photos and an introduction documenting their importance.

Memorias del subdesarrollo, de Tomás Gutiérrez Alea

Ediciones Contrabando

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Mraz, John. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Mraz, John

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Mraz, John. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Photographing the Mexican Revolution: Commitments, Testimonies, Icons (The William and Bettye Nowlin Series in Art, History, and Culture of the Western Hemisphere)

Nacho Lopez, Mexican Photographer (Volume 14) (Visible Evidence)

Nacho Lopez, Mexican Photographer (Volume 14) (Visible Evidence)

Looking for Mexico: Modern Visual Culture and National Identity

Looking for Mexico: Modern Visual Culture and National Identity

History and Modern Media: A Personal Journey (Critical Mexican Studies)

History and Modern Media: A Personal Journey (Critical Mexican Studies)

Uprooted: Braceros in the Hermanos Mayo's Lens

Uprooted: Braceros in the Hermanos Mayo's Lens

Memorias del subdesarrollo, de Tomás Gutiérrez Alea