Looking for Mexico: Modern Visual Culture and National Identity

by John Mraz

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 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 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.

360 pages, Paperback

First published May 25, 2009

Reviews

[Mavis Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

How has Mexican identity been formed? What role has been played in its formation by visual images? How has this role changed over time? How have Mexican and United States' views of each other influenced historical events?
Such a fascinating discussion allowed me to review the epochs of Mexican history. Tracing the dominant visual media in those eras introduced me to some of the most important makers of visual imagery in Mexico. Among the many interesting topics is Mexico's changing depictions of women, the political uses of the Mexican Revolution, the emergence of "celebrity culture," and ways immigration to Mexico from Europe and the United States, and migration from Mexico to the United States, has impacted Mexican culture. Toward the end of the book, examining the life and legacy of Frida Kahlo opened my eyes to new ways of understanding her.