Manuel Carrillo: Becoming Mexico

A representative figure of Mexicanidad – a cultural movement that emerged in the 1920s after Mexico’s Revolution – Manuel Carrillo (1906-1989) documented everyday life of indigenous Mexico to substantiate a national identity by purging colonial and any other foreign influence from contemporary art.

His proud and happy subjects – campesinos, indios, mestizo men, women and children – but his pictures were also able to capture the despair endemic to these impoverished, rural communities.