Mexico: The Revolution and Beyond: photographs by Agustin Victor Casasola, 1900-1940

By Agustin Victor Casasola, Pablo Ortiz Monasterio, and Pete Hamill

Background:

Agustin Victor Casasola photographed it all, from the lavish celebration in 1910 of President Porfirio Diaz’s eighth election, to the day one year later when he sailed into exile and Mexico City’s streets were filled with joyful citizens saluting the rebel Francisco Madero. Unfortunately for Mexico, the thirty-four years of Diaz’s rule (peaceful but harshly restrictive and punitive) were followed by nearly two decades of rebellion, strife, and outright war, led by revolutionaries such as Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa, both of whom were photographed alive and dead by Casasola.

In about 1912, Casasola and his brother, Miguel, created what may be one of the world’s first photo agencies, working with a group of photographers to cover Mexico in all its aspects—from crime and the courts to entertainment, industry, and home life. These are now housed in the Casasola Archive of Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History.

Consisting of nearly 500,000 images, the archive the Casasola brothers established has become a treasure of the Mexican government.

Book Description:

This coffee-table book contains over 150 photographs from the Casasola collection and are not exclusively ones he took. Besides the photographs, the book contains three essays, including a combined history of Mexico and Augustin Victor Casasola by well-known writer Pete Hamill.

My Opinion:

This book is far more about photographs and the photographers than it is about the Mexican Revolution. Less than a fourth of the pictures record events during the decade of fighting. What it does well is show the human side of life, the grittiness of war, and Mexico's transformation into the modern world of the 20th century. Some of the photos—such as of Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata sitting side by side in the National Palace—have been reproduced in countless publications. Others are new to me. Of those, the ones impressing me most show large groups of people in motion. In one, troops loyal to Francisco Madero ride into town at a gallop. In another, federal troops and soldaderas are running out of a train station in Mexico City.

Full citation:

Casasola, Agustin Victor, Pablo Ortiz Monasterio, and Pete Hamill, Mexico: The Revolution and Beyond: Photographs by Agustin Victor Casasola 1900-1940, Aperture; CONACULTA-INAH, New York, Mexico City, 2003.