Early Mexican Photography (Part II)
Early Mexican portraits have much to tell us about the upper echelons of 19th-century society and the competing social and political forces at play during a tumultuous time.
In Part II of Early Mexican Photography, we will further explore the collection of Mexican daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, and tintypes assembled by Graham Pilecki and acquired by the Getty Museum in 2015.
Discover how members of the upper class, soldiers, and monks in 19th-century Mexico chose to present themselves through clothing, props, and poses. In collaboration with a photographer, they created likenesses that reveal aspects of their individuality and insights into the Mexican upper class and culture of the 1840s-1870s.
[Portrait of a Woman in a Yellow-tinted Dress] [Portrait of a Woman in a Yellow-tinted Dress] (about 1850s) by UnknownThe J. Paul Getty Museum
À la mode in Mexico
The wealthy women of Mexico most often chose to be photographed in fashionable dresses and skirts that would have been at home on the streets of Paris, London, or Madrid. Hand coloring highlighted the luxurious fabrics. The women had their hair done in the latest modes also taking cues from European styles. Their jewelry and fans similarly reinforce their material comfort.
[Portrait of a woman in a full-skirted dress] (about 1850s-1870s) by UnknownThe J. Paul Getty Museum
By narrowing the distance between the sitter and the camera, this photographer created a composition in which the woman’s skirt fills the frame, highlighting the full luxuriousness of her fashion. The woman appears to be Indigenous or mestiza (of mixed European and Indigenous heritage).
[Portrait of a Man Holding a Stick, possibly Francisco González Bocanegra] [Portrait of a Man Holding a Stick, possibly Francisco González Bocanegra] (about 1850s) by UnknownThe J. Paul Getty Museum
The men portrayed in the Pilecki Collection of photographs equally gave great attention to their attire as well, usually wearing European-styled coats, waistcoats, trousers, and cravats. This young man has been tentatively identified as Francisco González Bocanegra (1824-1861), a Mexican poet who wrote the lyrics to the Mexican national anthem.
He holds a long, narrow instrument in his right hand—perhaps an elaborate pen or a conductor’s baton.
[Portrait of a seated woman and man] [Portrait of a seated woman and man] (about 1850s) by UnknownThe J. Paul Getty Museum
While this couple is well-dressed, the man’s coat seems too big for him. Perhaps he had to borrow clothing for the important occasion. In this double portrait, the relationship between the two seems uncertain or new. They do not physically interact with each other, but rather look straight at the camera.
Because the Spaniards had been in Mexico for so long, some of the fashions such as the mantilla (a lace or silk scarf) and the rebozo (shawl), long straight hair, and small curls of hair set off against the forehead or sides of the face were considered distinctly Mexican by the mid-19th century.
[Portrait of a man in a studio with rifle and hat] (about 1850s-1870s) by UnknownThe J. Paul Getty Museum
En el Campo in Mexico
The Mexican countryside (el campo) was the site of natural beauty, natural resources, and great wealth at the sites of haciendas. Haciendas also had their roots in Spanish colonialism. For generations, Spanish nobility or settlers owned these large estates in rural areas. They became a crucial part of the Mexican economy because of their farms and orchards; sometimes they included mines and factories as well.
This man was likely the owner of a hacienda or his son. He wears distinctive Mexican charro-style clothing. Because the style is so closely associated with the national identity of Mexico, wearing it was an expression of national pride.
The charro style was adapted from fashion brought over by the colonizing Spaniards in the 17th century. Initially, the Spanish government did not allow Indigenous Mexicans to own or ride horses without permission. When Spanish landowners needed Indigenous individuals to ride for work purposes, they required them to wear the charro costume to distinguish them from Spaniards and other Indigenous people.
While the charro style of clothing originally designated the lower classes, luxurious versions of the same style became a status symbol for wealthy landowners.
[Horizontal portrait of a woman between two men] (about 1850s-1870s) by UnknownThe J. Paul Getty Museum
The trio in this ambrotype appears to be a mother and her grown sons.
The men are dressed in short charro-style jackets, with the man on the right wearing silver or gold rivet-lined chaps and a wide-brimmed hat.
This portrait appears to have been made in a more casual environment, perhaps by a traveling photographer at the sitters' own home. Unusually for the time, the three display their close relationships by leaning in and draping their arms and hands upon each other.
Military
The Mexican military played an important role throughout the turbulent 19th century. Two young men—the one in uniform either a cadet or soldier—pose together in this daguerreotype. The image brings to mind famed figures from Mexico’s past known as Los Niños Héroes (the Boy Heroes). Even today Mexican children learn about the six cadets who died on September 13, 1847 defending Mexico City against the Americans in the Battle of Chapultepec, one of the last battles of the US-Mexico War.
Religion & Colonialism
The Roman Catholic Church arrived in Mexico along with the Spaniards in the 1500s and has maintained a presence there ever since. The Church and individuals in the Church embraced the new technology of photography as a way to spread its message. Daguerreotypes showing friars, saints, or religious scenes may have been included in a family’s domestic altar, along with flowers, paintings, and other devotional objects.
This daguerreotype below draws attention to the problematic role of the Catholic Church and the Spaniards in Mexico. It’s a photograph of a 19th-century engraving by John Sartain based on a painting titled Affection of the Indians for Las Casas by an artist named Collin. This is the only example in the Pilecki Collection of a photographic reproduction of a work of art.
The image depicts the Dominican friar Bartolemé de las Casas (1486–1566) on his deathbed, surrounded by an Indigenous man and woman, a Spanish doctor, and two conquistadors. This imagined scene smooths over Las Casas’ complicated relationship with the Indigenous peoples of the New World.
For a period, Las Casas owned an encomienda, a plantation granted by the Spanish Crown that benefited from the labor of indentured Indigenous laborers. As time passed, he realized how cruelly Spain treated Indigenous peoples. He relinquished his land and became an advocate for their humane treatment for the rest of his life. However, this shift was motivated, in part, because he saw great potential for expanding the power of the Church if he and his fellow Catholic missionaries could convert the freed Indigenous peoples of the New World.
[Portrait of a seated woman in a shawl holding a dead child] (about 1850s-1870s) by UnknownThe J. Paul Getty Museum
An Afterlife
In the early days of photography, most people could afford maybe a handful of photographic portraits to mark important milestones through the course of their lives. Death was the final milestone.
[Post-mortem portrait of a young girl on a bed] (about 1850s-1870s) by UnknownThe J. Paul Getty Museum
Post-mortem photography became a common practice in Mexico, as it did in Europe and the United States. Post-mortem photographs could serve as studies for paintings, but primarily they were precious souvenirs for loved ones left behind. This practice continued into the 20th century in Mexico.
Each of these photographs in the Pilecki Collection has a story to tell about the sitters, the photographer, and 19th-century Mexican culture. These images visually track conventions of upper-class fashion, photographic poses, and studio settings of that era. At the same time, we find a diversity in the sitters’ physical appearances across the collection, reminding us that even the Mexican upper class was, and is, made up of a multiplicity of cultures and ethnicities.
These small familial keepsakes continue to guard mysteries almost 175 years after the first ones in the group were made, and there is much more to learn. We’d love to hear from you with any information you may have to share about them. Please email us at photographs@getty.edu.
© 2021 J. Paul Getty Trust, Los Angeles
For more resources
Plate Sizes
Photographic Process Videos
Daguerreotype
Ambrotype
Tintype
Further Reading
Idurre Alonso and Judith Keller, eds., “Photography of Argentina, 1850-2010 (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2017)
Rosa Casanova and Adriana Konzevik, Mexico: A Photographic History, A Selective Catalogue of the Fototeca Nacional of the INAH (México, D.F. : Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes ; Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia ; Editorial RM, 2007)
Olivier Debroise, Mexican Suite: A History of Photography in Mexico, trans. Stella de Sá Rego (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 2001)
John Elderfield, Manet and the Execution of Maximilian (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2006)
Beth Guynn, “Mexico,” Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography, ed. John Hannavy (New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2008) 922-924
Manuel De Jesús Hernández, Los Inicios de la Fotografía en México 1839-1850 (México, D. F.: Editores Hersa, 1989)
John Mraz, “War, Portraits, Mexican Types, and Porfirian Progress 1847-1910” in Looking for Mexico: Modern Visual Culture and National Identity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009) 13-58
To cite this exhibition, please use: "Early Mexican Photography" published online in 2021 via Google Arts & Culture, Getty Museum, Los Angeles
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