Resumen

FAVILA VAZQUEZ, Mariana. Photography and Mexican Landscapes: a Reflection from Cultural Geography (1860-1910). Invest. Geog [online]. 2021, n.106, e60463.  Epub 06-Jun-2022. ISSN 2448-7279.  https://doi.org/10.14350/rig.60463.

In Mexico, photography from the mid-19th century and the first half of the 20th century has been studied from a historical perspective that emphasizes its role in shaping the Mexican nation and identity. Besides including picturesque portraits of people performing a range of activities that have been identified as “Mexican types”, the topics covered by these images include landscapes assumed to be the target of the lens and admiration of photographers due to their natural beauty. This article stems from cultural geography to approach the study of photography as a visual experience depicting the environment while stimulating geographical thinking. From this approach, the following question arises: How is photography positioned within the interests of cultural geography for interpreting a variety of Mexican landscapes? To address this question, we analyzed a corpus of 514 photographs of Mexican landscapes retrieved from free-access digital repositories, captured between 1860 and 1910, authored by six American (Benjamin West Kilburn, Bert E. Underwood and Elmer Underwood, William Henry Jackson, Winfield Scott, and Charles Waite) and three French (Desire Charnay, Julio Michaud and Abel Briquet) photographers. These photographers captured different types of landscapes during tours carried out mainly along the country’s railway routes and trips by mule, on foot, or other modes of transportation to different locations. To surpass the illustrative character of these images, this article explores their role in the construction of geographical thinking, which, similar to photographs of the “Mexican types”,2 led to the notion of a common Mexican landscape that was part of the invention of the Mexican nation. Martin Jay’s concept of the scopic regime - understood as the particular perception of a given society - and Graciela Silvestri’s notion of a common place are applied here to propose the identification of common landscapes in these photographs. The number of photographs retrieved from digital files did not cover the total production of the photographers studied but is a representative sample of their photographic production on Mexican geography. A chart depicting a geo-photographic regionalization was elaborated from the geographic location of photographs, which involved the documentary and historical research that allowed the georeferencing of each of them and the cartographic analysis of the photographer’s; itineraries. Besides, the landscapes represented were analyzed, identifying three types: rural, urban, and mixed landscapes, displayed in photographic mosaics. Finally, this review reflects on the role of photography in a visual narrative that was part of the invention of the Mexican nation that shaped a territorial image of modern Mexico. These photographs illustrated the vision that political institutions and foreign companies sought to create by representing the country’s modernization based on transportation infrastructure, productive activities, and urbanization. Photographers such as Winfield Scott and Charles Waite were hired by publishing companies to tour the country and take pictures of places with high tourist potential for inclusion in travel guides or distribution as postcards at points of sale in Mexico and abroad. Photographers such as Desire Charnay traveled the country to build photographic records of archaeological and ethnographic interest that were later published in photographic albums or displayed in international exhibitions. Since these photographs circulated in different formats, Mexicans were able to contemplate, in their own country, a multiplicity of views offered by foreign photographers of a series of common landscapes that included volcanoes, mountain ranges, lacustrine landscapes, cities with colonial architecture, towns, and mining centers in rural, urban, and mixed environments from different regions of Mexico..

Palabras llave : landscape; photography; Mexico; geographic disambiguation; cultural geography.