March 16 - April 31
Location
CCCM Mexican Center for Culture and Cinematic Arts
2401 West 6th Street
Los Angeles, CA 90057
To enter the world of Manuel Ramos, a reporter whose work spans from the splendours of the Porfiriato to the cruel days of early 20th century civil wars; an advocate of the immaculate cromo and religious drama; a failed painter but accomplished yet autodidact inspector of colonial monuments; and above all the champion of Catholicism and its traditions, one has to go back to the spiritual Conquest of the New World. The story of evangelisation lies in an image as mixed in ist techniques as in its subject, which was taken by the photographer at the beginning of the 30's, probably for the 400th anniversary of the mariophany (1931). A photomontage bathed by the light of Creation where a subjugated Anahuac Indian prince contemplates Mexico's new rising Star standing at the centre of the sacred Sun Stone explain, her figure erected on the edges of a crescent moon, her body wrapped in a mantle of constellations; her almighty Queen, the Virgin of Guadalupe.
Thanks to the support of La Casa de los Arboles de Apizaco AC, headed by Carmen Ramirez, the CCCM han been able to gain access to the magnificent collection: "Manuel Ramos: photographer guadalupano" File Manuel Ramos (1874-1945), who knew about the fall of Juan Andreu Almazán, the splendor of Porfirio Díaz and witnessed the triumphant entrance to Mexico City of the revolutionary Zapata and Villa.
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