La photographie au service d’un mythe fondateur de la nation : l’exemple des images de la Révolution mexicaine

The analysis of the reuse of Mexican Revolution photographs in the illustrated press of Mexico during the Post-Revolution period (1910-1940) reveals how a vast, original iconographic body (the whole set of Civil War photographs was taken during the battles that took place between 1910 and 1920) can undergo a progressive reduction, which results in an increasingly restrictive selection of images. The few photographs that survived this drastic process of reduction convey a purely symbolic image of the Revolution, smoothing and simplifying the event’s complexity. The establishment of the Mexican identity in the 20th century was based on nationalism and the founding myth of the Revolution. The symbolic, even mythical, aspects of the Civil War that were captured by photography have naturally found their place as one of the embodiments of the Mexican national identity. This study emphasizes the role that the photography of the revolutionary press and the illustrated press played in consolidating the post-revolutionary public dialog and in constructing the Mexican nation in the 20th century