The Cathedral of Mexico
Photograph
The Cathedral of Mexico
1884
Albumen silver print
Image: 43.4 × 53.8 cm (17 1/16 × 21 3/16 in.)
Mount: 46.2 × 56.4 cm (18 3/16 × 22 3/16 in.)
Museum accession
1981.2239.0017
Inscriptions recto BL (in image): 1130 THE CATHEDRAL OF MEXICO
recto BR (in image): W.H. JACKSON & CO DENVER COL
recto BR (in image): W.H. JACKSON & CO DENVER COL
TextDuring two trips made in 1883 and 1884, William Henry Jackson made photographs for the Mexican Central Railway (Ferrocarril Central Mexicano), which traversed more than a thousand miles of new tracks between Mexico City and El Paso, Texas, as a result of President Porfirio Díaz’s modernization efforts. Adapting a strategy used by railroad companies in the United States, the railway planned to use the photographs to promote more widespread foreign investment in Mexico. Jackson made more than five hundred photographs of tracks slicing through mountains and rugged terrain, but he was equally attentive to subject matter that US citizens had come to associate with Mexico, such as people living in extreme poverty and the example of Spanish colonial architecture seen here.
