Picturing Mexico's Past: Photography and Historia Grafica

Abstract

From a standpoint of what "photohistory" out to be, this article critiques the major book series on the historia gráfica (graphic history) of Mexico that have appeared in that country since 1920s. It begins with those produced by the Casasola Archive, Historia gráfica de Revolución mexicana (Graphic history of the Mexican Revolution) and Seis siglos de historia gráfica de México (Six Centuries of Mexican Graphic History). It then proceeds to comment on the more recent series subsidized by the Mexican government during the 1980s and early 1990s: Memoria y olvido (Memory and Forgetting), Así fue la Revolución mexicana (This was the Mexican revolution), Biografía del poder (Biography of Power), Historia Gráfica de México (Graphic History of Mexico), and Veracruz: Imágenes de su historia (Veracruz: Images of its History). The article argues that historias gráficas have been fundamental to the representation of Mexico's pas, but that they have rarely been carried out with the rigor necessary to construct real "photohistories."

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