Emiliano Zapata 100 años, 100 fotos / Zapata: 100 years, 100 Photographs

Ciudad de México: Casasola México, 2022. First Edition. Paperback. 272p., photos, facsimiles, wrps. New. Item #81572
ISBN: 9789587982350

This catalog commemorates the 100-year anniversary of the assassination of Emiliano Zapata (1879-1919). It collects the material presented in a series of exhibitions of photographs (Colombia, Mexico, USA and UK) from the Gustavo Casasola Collection and other public and private archives. Although today Zapata is something of a posterboy of the Mexican Revolution, at the time he was portrayed—even by some of his fellow revolutionaries—as a dark-skinned bandit, a sort of “Attila”, an enemy of civilization. Many photographs of Zapatistas were initially used to illustrate the alleged filth, savagery, and irrationality of Southern revolutionaries. Later on, the Mexican state itself became “Zapatista”: it not only appropriated the agrarian and social demands of the Army of the South but also instrumentalized and circulated images of those revolutionary “others” that the government supposedly represented. The nationalistic remembrance of Zapata has paradoxically buried the tradition of the oppressed. In opposition to this appropriation by the State, we present a series of relatively anomalous images such as those taken by the Zapatistas themselves, as well as several images of women and of a transgender Zapatista that problematize typical representations of the Revolution. Rather than commemorating death, this catalog wants to spark the affective power of visual memory to celebrate the claims and lives of those who were dumped in the common grave of history or buried—like Zapata—under heavy monuments.

Price: $69.90

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