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PHOTOGRAPHY

OTHER PHOTOGRAPHIC FINDINGS

Mexcaltitan Island. Nayarit. Mexico. Circa 1950

Gelatin silver print -12.6 x 18.1 cm / 4.96 x 7.12 in.- with its classic white margin. On the reverse and handwritten in ink the legend: “(...) Mexcaltitan, Nay. Ism. Single house". Good copy.


Magnificent aerial photography taken from an airplane over the exotic island of Mexcaltitán, in the municipality of Santiago Ixcuintla, Nayarit. Its name means “wealth, abundance” in the Nahuatl language. It has, as can be seen in the photograph, a very particular urbanization, with four main streets in the shape of a cross in the center of a circle -that continues the shape of the island- and, outside this central circle, the lands were subdivided from radial mode, towards the coast; while in the center of the trace and formed by the intersection of the four mentioned streets, is the square of the island. In the rainy season, this small island on the Pacific coast floods and the inhabitants travel its streets in boats, which is why it is called "The Mexican Venice". In 1986 it was declared a historical monument.


Ismael Casasola Zapata (1902 - 1964), was the second son of one of the Casasola brothers, Agustín Víctor, with whom he learned the trade from a very young age. Regarding his art, Daniel Escorza Rodríguez affirmed, "he has carried the symbolic weight of his father on his shoulders, in such a way that he has remained in a kind of ostracism, isolated from the circuit of photographers of the middle of the last century”. Invisibilized after the fame of "the Casasola" or the so-called "Casasola Archive" -we continue with the Mexican researcher-, "it seems that it is no longer possible to put the Casasola in a single suitcase as a collective”. (1)


Ismael worked as a photojournalist in numerous Mexican media, such as the magazines El Universal Ilustrado, and especially Hoy, where he published numerous visual accounts of the Federal District and the interior of his country. Unlike his brother Gustavo, also a photographer, Ismael had dedicated himself to editing and safeguarding the Casasola Archive, Islamel dedicated himself exclusively to the production of an important visual record, printing to his images that already arouses attention among scholars and collectors of photography from Mexico.


His uncle Miguel Víctor and his father Agustín Víctor, especially the latter, formed the famous "Casasola Archive" with about 400,000 photographs documenting the history of Mexico from 1894 and especially the Porfirian period until 1910 and the immediate Mexican Revolution. Photos of various professionals are preserved there, but the Casasola's merit was to generate the first modern photojournalism agency in the Aztec country. He was succeeded at his death by his sons Gustavo, Dolores and Piedad, who guarded that treasure. Ismael fulfilled his mission inheriting the profession of photographer.


Notes:

1. Daniel Escorza Rodríguez: The urban images of Isamel Casasola, 1937-1940. Configuration at a glance. In “Con-tempor. All history in the present ”. México, N. 7, June 2017.

S.O.IV-DOM

AUTHOR ISMAEL CASASOLA

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