Ana Casas Broda. Agustín Víctor Casasola. Rita Pomade Agustín Victor Casasola was not a painter or a poet or one of the many intellectuals or revolutionaries during the early decades of the twentieth century who consciously strove to forge a Mexican identity. Yet, as witness and recorder of those tumultuous years, his influence was as great and may prove to be more lasting. There is no medium that has greater immediacy than the photograph. And as such, it has great power.
It's interesting that he never thought of himself as an "art" photographer like Edward Weston or Manuel Alvarez Bravo, two men who sought to capture the face of Mexico and whose work he would have certainly known at the time. Agustin Victor Casasola was born in Mexico City on July 28,1874. By the time he was twenty years old he had moved from setting type to writing stories and became a reporter for El Imparcial, one of the official newspapers of the Porfirio Díaz regime.
He couldn't have been better placed in history. In 1907 he did the unthinkable. Ulises Castellanos. Clarice, ciudad gloriosa, tiene una historia atormentada. Varias veces decayó y volvió a florecer, teniendo siempre a la primera Clarice como modelo inigualable de todo esplendor, por comparación con la cual el estado presente de la ciudad no deja de suscitar nuevos suspiros a cada vuelta de las estrellas.
En los siglos de degradación la ciudad, vaciada por las pestilencias, rebajada de estatura por los derrumbes de viguerías y cornisas y por los desmoronamientos de tierra, oxidada y obstruida por incuria o ausencia de los encargados de la conservación, se repoblaba lentamente al reemerger de sótanos y madrigueras hordas de supervivientes que como ratones hormigueaban movidos por la manía de hurgar y roer, y también de arrebañar residuos y frangollar, como pájaros haciendo su nido. Italo Calvino Son más de 20 años de hacer, pensar y compartir imágenes.
Reinventemos el fotoperiodismo y resignifiquemos la imagen. Gilberto Chen. José Luis Cuevas. Marco Antonio Cruz. Rodrigo Cruz. Héctor Cruz Juárez. Susana Casarín.