The Shock of Modernity: Crime Photography in Mexico City

Agustín Víctor Casasola and his brother Miguel were photojournalists until the foreign press corps arrived to cover the Mexican revolution in 1911, when they formed an agency that eventually compiled more than a million images. The Shock of Modernity collects a careful selection of work from the Casasolas' criminological archive, now property of the Fototeca of the National Institute of Anthropology and History in Pachuca, Hidalgo. Collectively these images--which include scenes of crimes, reconstructions of crimes, and documentation of evidence and police procedures--offer a cutaway view of society over the course of the first half of the twentieth century.