Fourteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

The focus of this presentation is the photo postcards of the Mexican Revolution. For the first time a major conflict was recorded using a hand held portable camera. The portability of the camera both enhanced and detracted from the medium. In its favor was the very portability that allowed it to be carried into remote places while allowing it a certain agility and spontaneity. The drawback: the postcard lacked the grand scale of the large plate negative cameras of earlier war photographers, and the quality of the prints was somewhat arbitrary depending on the skill of each photographer. In spite of the drawbacks, among those photo postcards that are technically excellent some of them must be ranked as works of great power and emotion equal to any art. The best of the photo postcards of the Mexican Revolution are not only works of art but also of history. As portraits of a generation that went to war, they represent art and artifact, and the photographers are artists of rare vision. As history they preserve the memory of that bloody conflict in detail, the names and faces and battles and dead, the forgotten or ignored history of Mexico still survives in these images. The photo postcards of the Mexican Revolution also expand the knowledge of this historic event by documenting what traditional photographers and historians have ignored. I can do a PowerPoint presentation with examples of the photo postcards.