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, Agustin Victor
Casasola, Tina Modotti, Manuel alvarez Bravo, Hector Garcia, 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
Fernandez 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
Armendariz, and Jorge Negrete with the effacing women: the mother,
Indian, and shrew as played by Sara Garcia, Dolores del Rio, and
Maria Felix. 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.
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