Mineral de La Luz: The Photography of John Horgan Jr.

 

This book offers a journey into Mexico's past, through photographs taken in the early twentieth century by photographer John Horgan Jr.—a contemporary of Jacob A. Riis, Alfred Stieglitz and Lewis W. Hine.

Within this bilingual publication are two texts. The first, by Oscar Sánchez Rangel, explores the historical context of the mining bonanza that took place in the State of Guanajuato, and specifically in the town of La Luz. The second, by Berenice Pardo Hernández, looks that the photographs themselves and the artist's perspective.

John Horgan Jr. is relatively unknown and this book represents only the second ever published about his life's work. He was hired by an American mining company to capture the booming mining industry and the latest technology. But as we take a closer look, we see that the artist went beyond what was expected of him, capturing other observations of his surroundings. And through photography, he produces a Social Document of the differences between the social classes and the extreme poverty and abominable conditions in which the mineworkers lived and worked. Read excerpt