A hundred years ago, one revolution had been upending the social order just south of the US border and another revolution was about to begin halfway around the world. These revolutions did more than expropriate the property of the wealthy. They discarded old ideas and created a field in which new ones took their place. This was especially true with photography.

Mexico before its revolution was a country dominated economically by the US, and on its cultural periphery. Through the turn of the twentieth century, the main aesthetic framework for Mexican photographers was defined by a Pictorialist tradition that asserted the medium’s status as “art.” The Pictorialist and Photo-Secession movement, led by Alfred Steiglitz and popularized through Camera Work, established New York City as the center of the photographic world in North America.

The Mexican Revolution, a decade-long conflict in which one in every seven Mexicans died, officially ended in 1920 with the termination of its civil war and the destruction of its old social order. New ideas about art and culture flourished in Mexico City’s post-revolutionary ferment, particularly in photography.