The city of Puebla: A century of images 1863–1963

The city of Puebla is the reflection of many histories. In 1987, its historical center was listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Its architectural surroundings have been an important part of people's history.

Since its founding in 1531, the city was seen as an important population in the New Spain. Land in the vast central valley was suited to agriculture, especially for the cultivation of wheat and corn.

Likewise, the intense commercial and cultural flow promoted by the Spanish Galleons—which arrived across the Atlantic Ocean—and the Chinese Nao ship—across the Pacific Ocean—provided the city with great wealth, all kinds of sumptuous objects and a great diversity of food and spices.

Together with all this, the great work of its inhabitants in the textile industry, tanneries and workshops, it promoted the growth and prestige of the city and empowered it as a rich provincial city and the second most important in the whole viceroyalty.

During the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, the capital underwent great economic transformations: in 1900 Puebla produced one fifth of the Mexican textile industry.

German and French entrepreneurs, already established in shops, imported the technological advances needed to boost industry and agriculture.

The set of photographs presented here is a visual testimony of what photographers, with their accurate eye, captured between 1863 and 1963 in this city. Not only did they get from the historical center buildings and churches—an architectural heritage of the richest and best preserved in any city—their photographs also give an account of the human presence in a very dynamic historical center.

German and French entrepreneurs, already established in shops, imported the technological advances needed to boost industry and agriculture.

In 2010, Puebla, along with other Mexican cities, was included as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO, because of the importance of its traditional cuisine from a community culture, ancestral and living.

Thus, this century of images can be perceived as the continuity of people's experiences, within a tangible and intangible historical heritage. History and memory intertwined in individual and collective perceptions, in specific moments of history that will not be repeated.