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Cruces y Campa Mexican carte-de-visite album
2022.R.8
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Title: Cruces y Campa Mexican carte-de-visite album
Date (inclusive): 1863-1866
Number: 2022.R.8
Creator/Collector:
Cruces y Campa
(Firm)
Physical Description:
1 Linear Feet
(46 cartes-de-visite in 1 album)
Repository:
The Getty Research Institute
Special Collections
1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1100
Los Angeles 90049-1688
Business Number: (310) 440-7390
Fax Number: (310) 440-7780
reference@getty.edu
URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10020/askref
(310) 440-7390
Abstract: The album contains 46 carte-de-visite
photographs, most of which were taken by the Mexican photography studio of Cruces y Campa
between 1863 and 1866 during the period known as the French Intervention when France
occupied Mexico. The photographs are mostly Mexican occupational portraits, organized first
by men and then women. Depicted are police officers, musicians, street vendors, and domestic
workers. Also included are a portrait of a Mexican Kickapoo man and woman and five portraits
of Mexican Kickapoo men.
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Language: Collection material is in
French .
The Mexico City photography studio, Cruces y Campa, was founded in 1862 by Antíoco Cruces
and Luis Campa, an engraving professor at the Academia de San Carlos, where both men had
studied. The studio was first located at Calle de San Francisco nr. 4 and later moved to
Calle del Empedradillo nr. 4 next to the Metropolitan Cathedral. Cruces y Campa published
their pointedly titled book of portraits of Mexican political figures,
Galería de personas que han ejercido el mando supremo de México, con
título legal o por medio de la usurpación
, in 1874. In addition to photographing
prominent members of society, the Liberal party, and the court of Maximillian, they also
made occupational portraits and photographs of Mexican tipos or types. Their "Tipos
populares mexicanos" series won a bronze medal at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial
International Exhibition. The following year Cruces took over the firm, renaming it Cruces y
Cie, and sometime later Campa opened a new studio called Campa y Compañia.
Sources Consulted:
Milwaukee Public Museum. "History of the Mexican Kickapoo."
https://www.mpm.edu/research-collections/anthropology/online-collections-research/mexican-kickapoo/history
Sezer, Adnan and Bruno Tartarin. "Album mexicain circa 1860."
https://photo-discovery.com/wp-content/uploads/Mexique-cdv.pdf
Contact
Library Reproductions
and Permissions
.
Cruces y Campa Mexican carte-de-visite album, 1863-1866, The Getty Research Institute, Los
Angeles, Accession no. 2022.R.8.
http://hdl.handle.net/10020/cifa2022r8
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Acquired in 2022.
The collection was processed, and the finding aid written, by Beth Ann Guynn in 2022.
The collection was digitized by the repository in 2022 and the images are available
online:
http://hdl.handle.net/10020/2022r8
Scope and Content of Collection
The album contains 46 albumen cartes-de-visite, most of which were made by the Mexican
studio of Cruces y Campa between 1863 and 1866 during the period known as the French
Intervention when France occupied Mexico. It opens with a portrait of Amand-Durand of Le
Guillois (Anathol-Charles-Lucien Leguillois), the founder of the French satirical journal
Le Hanneton, journal des toqués, a copy of which he holds
in his hand. On the same page a carte-de-visite reproduces Le Guillois's campaign flier for
his candidacy for the Second Empire legislative elections of 1863. The presence of these two
photographs at the start of the album provides strong evidence that the album was originally
owned by Le Guillois. As Le Guillois himself was never in Mexico it is likely that the album
or at least the cartes-de-viste were presented to him by someone who obtained them in
Mexico.
The photographs are mostly Mexican occupational portraits, organized first by men and then
women. Depicted are police officers, musicians, a variety of street vendors, and domestic
workers. While a few male portraits depicting Mexican indigenous men are captioned simply as
"indien," two women are more specifically identified as indigenous women from Cholula.
Following the portraits of women are a portrait of a Mexican Kickapoo man and woman and
five portraits of Mexican Kickapoo men. Two portraits are captioned with the made-up tribe
name "Makois." One man wearing a bearskin and otter tooth necklace and cap and holding a
club is depicted in both full- and-half-length portraits. During the nineteenth century, the
Kickapoo, who originally lived in the "Algonquian heartland," the area bounded by the Great
Lakes and the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, were increasingly pushed to lands further south
and west of their traditional territory as American settlers advanced across the continent.
Some Kickapoo entered Mexico as early as 1839, and by 1866 the Mexican government had
granted the land known as El Nacimiento de los Kikapúes, near Múzquiz, Coahuila to them.
The final portraits in the album are of José Rafael Carrera y Turcios, president of
Guatemala from 1844 to 1848 and then again from 1851 to 1865, and a Manuel Penedo portrait
of a man identified as de Molina. The final carte-de-visite in the album is a montage of
postage stamps by a photographer from St. Germain signing his work as Saint Thomas
d'Aquin.
The album has heavily embossed brown leather covers with two brass clasps, also heavily
embossed, and lacking their latches. French captions are penciled on the mounts below most
of the cartes-de-visite. The titles of the individual cartes-de-visite are from these
nineteenth-century annotations, some of include terms which are now considered to be racist,
biased, pejorative, or offensive.
The collection is arranged in a single series: Series I. Cruces y Campa Mexican
carte-de-visite album, 1863-1866.
Carrera, Rafael,
1814-1865
Le Guillois, Anatole
Kickapoo Indians -- Mexico --
Portraits
Occupations -- Mexico
Street vendors -- Mexico
Mexico -- Description and travel
Albumen prints -- Mexico -- 19th century
Cartes-de-visite -- Mexico -- 19th century
Group portraits -- Mexico -- 19th century
Photograph albums -- Mexico -- 19th century
Studio portraits -- Mexico -- 19th century
Photographs, Original
Cruces y Campa
(Firm)
Penedo, Manuel