Agustín Víctor Casasola (28 July 1874 – 30 March 1938) was a Mexican

photographer A photographer (the Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who uses a camera to make photographs. Duties and types of photograp ...

and partial founder of the Mexican Association of Press Photographers. Casasola began his career as a

typographer Typography is the art and technique of Typesetting, arranging type to make written language legibility, legible, readability, readable and beauty, appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, Point (typogra ...

for the newspaper ''El Imparcial'', eventually moving to

reporter A journalist is a person who gathers information in the form of text, audio or pictures, processes it into a newsworthy form and disseminates it to the public. This is called journalism. Roles Journalists can work in broadcast, print, advertis ...

then on to photographer in the early 1900s. He became a photographer in 1894. By 1911 Casasola was credited with founding the first Mexican press agency, Agencia Fotografica Mexicana. Casasola was later thanked by the interim president in 1911, Francisco León de la Barra, for having "inaugurated a new phase of freedom in the press photography." By the end of 1912 the agency had expanded and changed its name to Agencia Mexicana de Informacion Fotografica. The agency brought on more photographers and began purchasing pictures from foreign agencies and amateurs, then redistributing those photographs to newspapers. When ''El Imparcial'' went out of business in 1917, Casasola recovered the newspaper's archives, eventually compiling many of the photographs into the famed "Album histórico gráfico" which covered the events of the

Mexican Revolution The Mexican Revolution () was an extended sequence of armed regional conflicts in Mexico from 20 November 1910 to 1 December 1920. It has been called "the defining event of modern Mexican history". It saw the destruction of the Federal Army, its ...

. Casasola only managed to print the first 6 volumes covering the years 1910 to 1912. It is believed the work did not fare well due to the changing attitude of people wanting to move on from the death and suffering that plagued the civil war. In 1920, Casasola as well as other notable Mexican photographers founded the Mexican Association of Press photographers. Casasola worked with his brother Miguel (1876-1951) and the family business expanded with the participation of his sons and daughters, Gustavo (1900-1982), Agustín (1901-1980), Ismael (1902-1964), Dolores (1907-2001), Piedad (1909-1953) and Mario (1923-1988). It carried on to the third generation with Ismael (1926-1970) and Juan (1937-1984), and Agustín (1930-1995). Casasola's collection was later renamed the Casasola Archive and is the foundational collection of the Mexican government's photographic archive, the Fototeca Nacional, administered by the National Institute of Anthropology and History of Mexico, in

Pachuca Pachuca (; ), formally known as Pachuca de Soto, is the capital and largest city of the east-central Mexico, Mexican States of Mexico, state of Hidalgo (state), Hidalgo, located in the south-central part of the state. Pachuca Municipality, Pach ...

. The collection totals over 500,000 prints and negatives. The archive is not exclusively the work of Casasola himself; it has the photos of some 500 different photographers. Researchers have found that the names of a number of the original photographers have been removed and Casasola's name substituted. Casasola might have "recogniz dthat it was important to create a single brand in order to compete with the foreign photo news agencies pouring into Mexico during the Revolution.Stallings, Tyler. "The Osuna Collection: A New Chapter in War Photography" in Ronald H. Chilcote, ed. ''Mexico at the Hour of Combat: Sabino Osuna's Photographs of the Mexican Revolution''. Laguna Beach, CA: Laguna Wilderness Press 2012, p.55.

References

External links

Sistema Nacional de Fototecas, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH)

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