Fotografía artística Guerra

Pedro Guerra, father and son, recorded life in the Yucatán state from 1877 to 1959; its 500 thousand negatives give rise to this book. Pedro Guerra Jordán and Pedro Guerra Aguilar, father and son, chronicle Yucatan from the late nineteenth century and until the middle of the twentieth century. From his studio Guerra Art Photography, whose collection has been protected at the Autonomous University of Yucatan (UADY) since 1977, the two chroniclers made the portrait of an era, built through around 500 thousand negatives and visual documents "a social and cultural picture about the Yucatan Peninsula", as they claim, as a prologue, José Antonio Rodríguez and Alberto Tovalín Ahumada, editors of the book Fotografía Artística Guerra, which is published within the framework of the 40th anniversary of the Pedro Guerra Photo Library. "Without a doubt, the Pedro Guerra archive contributes with other collections from Mexico to visually build the national history, and the fact that the Autonomous University of Yucatan has hosted this collection and preserved it and then enriched it, including with donations from other photographers and from other collectors, it is a wonder because it documents the history of the 19th and 20th century of Yucatan and even of the Peninsula," says the historian and anthropologist Blanca González Rodríguez Ten scholars also participate in the book analyzing the vital issues in the Guerra archive: The Study, Cotidians, Henequen, Vestiges, Rituals and Politics. Edward Jimmy Montañez, who worked for 32 years at the Fototeca Pedro Guerra, points out that father and son were undoubtedly the most important photographers not only from Yucatan but even from all of the southeast of the country. "In almost 100 years of photographic production we will find that they portrayed Yucatec society as a whole, we can see portraits of both the upper social class, entrepreneurs, Yucatecan hacienda owners, governors, municipal presidents and in the same way portrayed peasants and workers; and the quality will not decrease because it is a social class or another." The editor Alberto Tovalín Ahumada says that there is a lot of material in the Guerra archive, so they decided to make a selection and focus on six themes that range from his portraits in the studio - which survived until 1975 in charge of a nephew of Pedro Guerra Aguilar - to images about daily life, haciendas of the henequen, archaeological remains, politics and rituals such as parties and the photography of the dead. "We were able to select the most representative themes, for example, politics, where the first feminist Congress is interesting, that is, the role of women in the political life of Yucatan that was impressive; the era of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, de Madero, Pino Suárez and Serapio Rendón. There is a very beautiful picture in the theater during the feminist congress," says Tovalín Ahumada.