Mexico Points the Camera at Itself

In order to view this feature, you must download the latest version of flash player here.

#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}

Americans tend to see Mexico narrowly, either as a playground of getaway beaches, tequila and tacos or as a source of drugs, crime and immigrants. But how do Mexicans see themselves?

A new book, “Mexican Portraits,” co-published by Aperture and Fundación Televisa and edited by Pablo Ortiz Monasterio and Vesta Mónica Herrerías, tackles that question by stepping back and exploring the faces and masks of a country that has often resisted lingering before the mirror. It’s no secret that Mexico is an incredibly visual place that draws in many from faraway lands. But it is also a country of solitude and reserve, where questions often lead to averted eyes and where many prefer to hold tight to their secrets. This is especially true now, as crime and government impotence have made it even harder for Mexicans to open up to outsiders.

José Bustamante, courtesy of Alfonso Morales Photographic studio “El Gran Lente,” Mexico City, circa 1950.

Which is why this boulder of a book matters. Spanning nearly the entire history of photography in Mexico, it manages to be expansive without being boring or compulsively encyclopedic. It offers a window â€" or hundreds of windows, with each image â€" into the mindset of Mexico, rich and poor, rural and urban. And unlike many projects of its kind, “Mexican Portraits” began not with the past, but with the present.

“We started by looking at what contemporary visual artists were doing with portraiture,” said Mr. Monasterio, a slight, bearded, illuminating man who has edited more than 100 books of photography. “It was an investigation: Who are we, and how did we become the way we are?”

The text of the book starts with a simple but telling declaration â€" “The essence of a portrait has more to do with enigma than with certainty” â€" and this conflict between seeing and not seeing emerges gradually throughout. There are some classic photographs in here that will be instantly recognizable to students of Latin American photography, like Salvador Toscano’s portrait of Pancho Villa (below) and the Casasola agency’s work from the 1920s. But the interplay between those images and more modern work â€" “this reality of different times that coexist” â€" is what Mr. Monasterio sought to emphasize.

Salvador Toscano, courtesy of Filmoteca de la UNAM/Archivo Salvador Toscano General Francisco Villa, Tacuba, Mexico City, 1914.

The cover image, for example, is a work by Gabriel de la Mora in which he peels the paper off a traditional portrait from 1897 so that the face is no longer visible. It still manages to be a portrait â€" not a single shred of paper has been removed â€" but it is one that represents both the 19th century and the late 1960s, when de la Mora toyed with it.

Deeper into the book, there is a self-portrait by Pedro Meyer (Slide 19), showing him as a little boy standing with his father in the 1940s. It is superimposed on another, similarly staged portrait of himself in 2000, standing with his own son, who is around the same age as Mr. Meyer was in the original.

There seems to be a more subtle conversation going on between Graciela Iturbide and Carlos Somonte. Ms. Iturbide’s portraits (Slide 1) of Oaxaca are timeless, showing the strength of simple women and their dignity as they stare straight at the camera against walls and in colonial doorways. Mr. Somonte’s subjects (Slide 18) are similar in attitude â€" there are no passive victims here â€" but he goes beyond just the people by posing them in settings both modern and ancient. Each portrait shows someone holding an animal, and instead of framing them with a two-dimensional background, Mr. Somonte photographed them in the middle of the desert, with a small white screen behind them. At the time, the area was suffering from an intense drought, and in the images, the land itself dwarfs everything, making the landscape as much of a subject as the person in the foreground.

“What interested me was to place the people in the space where they live, in their habitat, to show that they are a part of that, the landscape,” Mr. Somonte said. He added that for Mexicans in particular, “I feel that the space where we are is an extension of who we are.”

What also stands out in his series is the transparency of the process. The ropes tied to rocks to hold the screen in place are visible in the images, and the relationship between the photographer, the subject and the setting is out in the open, as well. Mr. Somonte said that was partly what helped put people at ease. Many of the residents he photographed were worried at first that he had come to persecute them for keeping rare wild animals, but the studio, which some of them helped set up and fortify against the elements, made it clear that Mr. Somonte was aiming for something more personal.

“The setup was very basic, so it was possible for anyone educated or not to understand,” he said. “It showed that I wasn’t taking pictures to persecute them or get them in trouble. It was a third-world studio. When the pictures came out, they were very satisfied.”

Many of the other photographers included in “Mexican Portraits” â€" mostly Mexican, with a few foreigners who have lived and worked in the country for years â€" also seem to be interested in exploring ideas of participation. Ana Casas Broda projects various versions of her body onto her photos, taking portraits of herself in the nude, breastfeeding or playing with her children. In an interview, she said that she had often heard people describe her photos as “too strong or too real,” but that this was part of the point. “For me, it’s essential because it makes me see the complexity of motherhood, and I think it’s positive to generate intense reactions in the viewer,” she said.

Jorge Alberto Beltrán Robles, courtesy of Coleccíon Yotepongomasaltiro From the series “Your Face Rings a Bell, 2010-11.”

The idea of posing takes on a more contemporary feel in the portraits of armed bodyguards taken by Carla Verea for her series “(IN)Security: Types of Bodyguards in Latin America, 2003-8″ (Slide 8), and in the more recent shots by Jorge Alberto Beltrán Robles of Mexico City club kids (above). Both photographers, in their own way, seem to be marveling at an expanding element of their society, and it’s hard not to notice how all of their subjects are aware of the camera and attempting to define themselves before it, even as they accidentally reveal deeper truths.

Taken together, the two series reveal the paradox of Mexico today. It is a country of dizzying developments, where bodyguards, criminals and the police are often interchangeable, and where a youthful middle class â€" confident, savvy, cool â€" is demanding to be noticed and respected by its government and by the world. A senior official here once said that Mexico should be seen as adolescent growing into its own. The portraits in this book seem to capture how the country has ended up at a time of transition, with the influence of the past still very present and the future still undefined.

“We as a culture have certain specificities, and photography reflects that,” Mr. Monasterio said. “We Mexicans tend to be very contemporary, and we always want to be more so, but we also carry this traditionalism. Young artists aren’t trying to emulate anyone, they’re just doing their own work, but there is this echo of the past that vibrates within them.”

Graciela Iturbide, courtesy of Photographic Collections, Fundación Televisa “The Goat’s Feet Seller,” from the series “Women’s Juchitán,” 1969.

Follow @damiencave and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Lens is also on Facebook.