Looking for Mexico
Modern Visual Culture and National Identity
John Mraz
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
Looking for Mexico
Modern Visual Culture and National Identity
John Mraz
About This Book
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, AgustĂn VĂctor Casasola, Tina Modotti, Manuel Ălvarez Bravo, HĂ©ctor GarcĂa, 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 FernĂĄndez 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 ArmendĂĄriz, and Jorge Negrete with the effacing women: the mother, Indian, and shrew as played by Sara GarcĂa, Dolores del RĂo, and MarĂa FĂ©lix. 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.