Cruces y Campa Mexican carte-de-visite album, 1863-1866

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Summary

Title:

Cruces y Campa Mexican carte-de-visite album

Dates:

1863-1866

Creators:

Cruces y Campa (Firm)

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.

Extent:

1 Linear Feet (46 cartes-de-visite in 1 album)

Language:

Collection material is in French .

Preferred citation:

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

Background

Scope and content:

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.

Arrangement

The collection is arranged in a single series: Series I. Cruces y Campa Mexican carte-de-visite album, 1863-1866.

Biographical / historical:

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

Acquisition information:

Acquired in 2022.

Processing information:

The collection was processed, and the finding aid written, by Beth Ann Guynn in 2022.

Physical location:

Request access to the physical materials described in this inventory through the catalog record for this collection. Click here for the access policy.

Rules or conventions:

Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Indexed terms

Subjects:: Kickapoo Indians -- Mexico -- Portraits
Occupations -- Mexico
Street vendors -- Mexico
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

About this collection guide

Collection Guide Author:: Beth Ann Guynn
Date Encoded:: This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2022-06-22 10:06:48 -0700 .

Access and use

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