Lake Chapala Artists and Authors

Why has it taken me so long to write about U.S.-born photographer C. B. Waite and his important contribution to documenting Mexico at the start of the twentieth century? The main challenge has been to unravel the discrepancies and inconsistencies in most previous accounts of his life and work. So, before examining Waite’s major contributions to documenting Mexican history, let’s get some of the more common and egregious misunderstandings out of the way once and for all.

First, C. B. Waite (who signed his work “Waite Photo”) is Charles Betts Waite (1861-1927), not Charles Burlingame Waite, as erroneously claimed in 2007 in Casanova and Konzevik’s major book about Mexican photographers, and—as recently as 2016—in an exhibition catalog published by Mexico’s National University, UNAM. (For the record, Charles Burlingame Waite (1824-1909) was an American writer and judge.)

Secondly, our Charles Waite did not marry “at age 35″ and then move to Mexico “in 1896 with wife and two daughters, Helen and Mary,” as claimed by some, including Francisco Montellano. Charles Betts Waite’s first wife was Alice A. Ironmonger; their only child was Hazel Pearl Waite, born in Los Angeles on 15 June 1885. Waite was on his own when he moved to Mexico in 1897. Three years later he married his second Alice—Alice Mary Cooley (1866–1923)—in Quincy, Illinois, and the new couple made their home in Mexico City.

Thirdly, Waite’s brother was not the “William Waite” murdered on a plantation near Veracruz in April 1912, as sometimes claimed. While C. B. Waite’s own father was, coincidentally, also named William, there is no known familial connection to the man killed in Mexico. Waite’s (only) brother was Frank Dawson Waite (1854–1927), a newspaperman associated with the San Diegan and the San Diego Sun, and considered “one of the ablest and most respected editorial writers in Southern California.”

To add to the confusion, Waite has often been credited with photographs taken by other photographers working in Mexico at the same time. I examine the background and reasons for this in a separate post: Who gets the credit? Charles Betts Waite or Winfield Scott?

Waite’s pre-Mexico life

Charles Betts Waite was born in Ohio on 19 December 1861 to an English-born couple, William and Ann (née Dawson) Waite. On passport and consular documents, he usually named his birthplace as Plymouth, Ohio, but sometimes claimed Auburn Township in Crawford County, Ohio. Either way, he was apparently raised in Plymouth. But, by June 1881, shortly before his 20th birthday, he had moved to California and was working with photographer Henry Ellis Coonley in the San Diego region. He married his first wife, Alice Aldelaid Ironmonger (1860-1948), in 1883. By his late twenties, Waite was credited for photographs published in the San Diego Union and was apparently working as a view photographer for Burdick and Company in Los Angeles.

During the 1890s, Waite’s photographs of ranches and landscapes in Southern California appeared in the Los Angeles-based magazine Land of Sunshine, and he was taking commissions from railroad companies, including the Santa Fe, Los Angeles Terminal, and Mount Lowe Railways. His 1896 voter registration in California puts him at 5’6″ tall, with blue eyes, dark hair, and living at 8 Stockton Street in Los Angeles.

C. B. Waite. Three views of Lake Chapala. Postcard published by Juan Kaiser c 1901, mailed 1902.

In May 1897, Waite left the U.S. for Mexico City, where he established his first studio at Calle de Rosales #200, intending to supply photographs primarily for American magazines. He moved several times during his thirty or so years in the city, and later addresses included San Cosme #8 and San Juan de Letrán #3 and #5.

Within months of arriving in Mexico City, Waite was advertising his professional services, which included “Developing and printing for amateurs. Views, Groups, Interiors and Haciendas; also Flash Light Photos at night.” Waite certainly traveled widely throughout Mexico, taking photographs and undertaking commissions related to archaeology, scenery, tourism, and indigenous groups. By February 1900 he had amassed “a great variety of general views comprising more than 1000 subjects from all parts of the Republic.” On a short business trip to the U.S. that month, Waite personally delivered hundreds of 20x 24-inch prints of the Mexican National Railway to investors north of the border.

During the winter of 1900-01, Waite spent several weeks in southern Mexico, on a commission from the U.S.-owned Chiapas Rubber Company to document its operations, including land clearance, planting, rubber tree cultivation and tapping; these photos were intended to stimulate further foreign investment in the company and its activities. Waite also documented the cultivation and harvesting of coffee, cacao, tobacco and sugar cane.

These photo trips were not without their dangers. The Mexican Herald informed readers in early 1901 that, a few weeks earlier (during his Chiapas trip), Waite had suffered an accident while taking his photographic equipment up the Río Michol, and barely escaped with his life. The boat capsized and Waite and his boatman were thrown into the torrent. As they struggled to the shore, they managed to salvage a can of crackers and a valise which fortuitously contained a flask of cognac.

The disaster cost Waite his ‘small’ (6 ½ x8-inch format) camera in the raging waters, and he was left with only his ‘large’ (20×24-inch format) Rochester Optical camera, which weighed 100 kg in its traveling case. Undaunted, Waite carried on. At Palenque, it took a team of 12 local helpers an entire day to carry the camera the six miles (km) from the village to the ruins, where Waite then took 24 photos of the archaeological site, but only after his 12-man crew had spent eight days hacking down enough brush and foliage to guarantee the best views. Waite’s photos of Palenque were one of the highlights on Mexico’s stand at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, that year.

That boat accident was not the only calamity to befall Waite in 1901. A few months later, he had an unexpected brush with Mexican police, accused of sending “indecent” material through the mail. A note in El Imparcial reported that one shipment from Waite contained photos of “miserable hovels” and “disheveled dirty women dressed in rags and men degenerated by every vice imaginable”. It was not impounded, but postcards in a second package showing “two dirty, absolutely wretched boys wracked with disease” were, and led to Waite’s arrest. Waite paid $400 pesos and was released from Belén prison three days later. Waite’s offense was not taking risqué “portraits of pubescent children” (for which Winfield Scott had been briefly imprisoned in California) but depicting the underbelly of Mexican society, which local authorities hoped would remain invisible to tourists.

Things brightened up in July 1901 when Waite was asked to visit Iguala, Guerrero, for a seance. Waite told a reporter afterwards that his photographic plates would convert skeptics: “I never had any faith in the spiritualist doctrine, but the appearance of scenes on the plates of my camera which I knew to have been absolutely clear… has aroused the curiosity of not only myself but many others who were previously skeptical on the subject.”

Waite’s major commissions that year included several for the government: Waite was tasked with producing about 1500 large format views of archaeological ruins in the republic for displays in the national museum, the precursor of Mexico’s world famous Museo Nacional de Antropología. And he was also hired by the government to supply photographs, including a series relating to bullfighting, for use on Mexico’s stand at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York.

Waite was back in the U.S. in 1902, “on business connected with his mining interests in Mexico. During the course of his travels through the interior as a landscape photographer, Mr Waite has secured control of a number of properties and the object of his visit to the U.S. is to place his property before American capitalists.” These mines were probably the small gold, silver and lead mines in Taxco, which he registered in his name in 1904. Not much more is known about them, so presumably they were never very successful.

C.B. Waite. c 1898? Lake Chapala from Carden Residence (Villa Tlalocan), Chapala.

A few months after purchasing the photographic view business of Cox and Carmichael in 1904, Waite visited Atequiza hacienda, then owned by the Cuesta Gallardo family. From a photographic standpoint, this was a significant event, since it was here, eight years earlier, where French cinematographer Gabriel Veyre and his partner Claude Ferdinand Von Bernard filmed eight short movie films, some of the earliest movies shot anywhere in Mexico, depicting rural life, dances, cockfights and daily activities. Atequiza hacienda was also the birthplace of Octaviano de la Mora (1841-1921), arguably the most famous of all the early photographers based in Guadalajara.

Waite has left us several very interesting photographs of the hacienda, including views of the chapel, the hacienda store and main patio, the view of the main buildings from the mill, and a panoramic view of the hacienda in its idyllic setting. A year after being the official photographer documenting U.S. Secretary of State Elhu Root’s visit to Mexico in 1907, Waite revisited Atequiza to take photographs of the “La Florida” mansion and of hacienda’s orange groves.

Though Waite certainly participated as official photographer on several academic expeditions, I do not believe they include the two in 1908—led respectively by Norwegian anthropologist Carl Lumholtz and German ornithologist Hans Gadow—claimed in the timeline offered by Fuentes Rojas and her colleagues. First, there is no record of Lumholtz (author of Unknown Mexico, based on his first four trips to Mexico, all prior to 1900) visiting Mexico in 1908. And, secondly, Waite is never mentioned in Gadow’s 1908 book “Through Southern Mexico.” The confusion in the latter case perhaps arose because Gadow dedicated his book, “To C.B.”, but this is not a reference to C.B. Waite, but to pioneering American ornithologist Charles Beebe.

By 1910, Waite was a highly respected member of Mexico City’s foreign community and master of the Freemasons’ Toltec Lodge. Though Waite’s photographic activities were greatly reduced after the downfall of President Díaz, and the start of the revolution, he is known to have photographed Mexico’s centenary celebrations in 1910 and to have taken some photos related to the Maderista conspiracy.

Despite what some websites claim (eg. Getty Research Institute), there is no evidence that Waite left Mexico for the U.S. in 1913. On the contrary, Waite and his wife continued to live in Mexico City for the next decade, as is evidenced by his passport applications in 1918 and 1920.

His 1918 passport application included a lengthy affidavit explaining why he had lived outside the U.S. since May 1897:

“My mother died of consumption when I was four years old. My health failed when I was a young man and it was believed that I would die of consumption also and I was ordered to live in a warm climate by my physicians and came to Mexico where I established a Commercial Photography business, making a specialty of wholesale views of the country on a large scale. Illustrations for books and magazines of the interesting features of the country was an important part of my business.”

In the same application, Waite listed his visits to the U.S. since moving to Mexico: September 1898, January 1899, July 1899, February 190l, May 1902, July 1903, September 1903, December 1904, December 1906 and January 1912.

It was only after Alice’s death in the American Hospital in Mexico City in June 1923 that Waite opted to return to the U.S. to be closer to his daughter. He revisited Mexico with his daughter briefly in 1925, before dying in Los Angeles at the age of 65 on 22 March 1927.

Waite’s body of work

Landscapes, markets, railway lines, towns, people going about everyday tasks, farms, tropical crops, rural areas, fiestas in danger of extinction, major cities, bull fights, official events… Waite photographed all these and more, amassing a huge collection of images, which were widely published, including in the popular periodical El Mundo (later El Mundo Ilustrado), Modern Mexico, and as postcards issued by almost all the larger postcard publishers.

As early as 1901 the Sonora News Company was advertising that it sold “Waite’s Photographic Views” of “Native Types and Scenes.” This series included costumbrista images of men, women and children going about their everyday occupations and tasks. In 1902, Granat’s Mexican Specialty Store offered “Waite’s, Carmichel’s [sic] and Other Photographers’ Views of Mexico” for $2.25 a dozen.” Waite’s photos were also published and/or sold by Ruhland & Ahlschier; Latapi y Bert; J. G. Hatton; and Jacob Kalb of the Iturbide Curio Shop (all based in Mexico City), and Juan Kaiser, based in Guadalajara.

Waite’s photos were used to illustrate numerous books, including ornithologist Charles Beebe’s Two Bird-Lovers in Mexico (1905) and Percy F. Martin’s Mexico of the twentieth century (1907).

Waite. Church at Chapala, as published in Pauncefote, 1900.

In 1905, Waite applied for, and was granted, formal registration for ten photographs related to Lake Chapala, numbered 770-779. They included two photos of “the Carden residence” (Villa Tlalocan), built by British consul Lionel Carden in 1896. Three years later, Carden sold the property and moved to Cuba, so these two photos—and most probably the other eight—must be much earlier than 1905, and were probably taken at the end of the 1890s. Waite’s other photographs of Chapala in this group of ten, some of them published as postcards, included “Street in Chapala” “Cathedral, Chapala,” and “La Playa, Chapala.” Several of the photos, including the one of San Francisco Church (above) were first published in Harper’s Bazaar in 1900 to illustrate the Hon. Maud Pauncefote’s landmark article about Lake Chapala. (An extended excerpt of the article appears in chapter 46 of Lake Chapala Through the Ages.)

Waite later also registered a large number of images acquired from other photographers such as Winfield Scott, including many additional images of Chapala, as well as images of Prison Island (#2094), Tuxcueca (2177), Tizapan River (2182), Point Fuerte, Chapala (2196), Jamay (2840), Petetan (sic, 3056), Alacran Island (3058) and Cojumatlan (3062). It is likely that some or all of these were photographs taken by Scott.Examples of Waite’s work have found their way into numerous major U.S. museum and library collections, including The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens; University of New Mexico’s Center for Southwest Research; Princeton University Library’s Collections of Western Americana; the Latin American Library of Tulane University; the Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas at Austin; the Eugene P. Lyle, Jr. Photographs, University of Oregon; the DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University; and at the Tomás Rivera Library at University of California, Riverside.

Despite this, there have been relatively few exhibitions featuring his work apart from “Mexican Life and Culture During the Porfiriato: The Photography of C.B. Waite, 1898-1913″ at the Southwest Museum, Los Angeles, in 1991; “Mexico: From Empire to Revolution” at the Getty Institute in 2000-2001; and “Charles B. Waite. Primeras impresiones” at Galerías de la Antigua Academia de San Carlos in Mexico City in 2016.

Waite’s significant contribution to the history of photography in Mexico was recognized at the turn of the millennium by the nation’s postal authorities, when it issued a series of stamps and souvenir sheet to commemorate 100 years of photography in Mexico. A number of the stamps incorporated tiny versions of photographs taken by Waite into their design.

Servicio Postal Mexicano. (2000) 100 years of photography.

Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offer more details about the history of the artistic community at Lake Chapala.

Sources

• Francisco Ballesteros Montellano. 1989. “C. B. Waite, profesional fotógrafo.” Tesis de Licenciatura, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
• ___ 1994. C. B. Waite, fotógrafo. Una mirada diversa sobre el México de principios del siglo XX. Mexico: Grijalba/CNCA.
• ___ 1998. Charles B. Waite: la época de oro de las postales en México. Mexico: CONACULTA (Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y Las Artes).
• Francisco Hernández. 2018. Diario sin fechas de Charles B. Waite (novel). USA: Almadia.
• Benigno Casas. 2010. “Charles B. Waite y Winfield Scott: lo documental y lo estético en su obra fotográfica”. Dimensión antropológica, 48: 221–244.
• Elizabeth Fuentes Rojas, Gabriela Prieto Soriano, Gabriela Vilches Larrea (coordinators). 2016. Charles B. Waite. Primeras impresiones. Mexico City: UNAM, Facultad de Artes y Diseño.
• Rosa Casanova and Adriana Konzevik. 2007. Mexico: A Photographic History. Mexico: Editorial RM.
• Clarence Alan McGrew. 1922. City of San Diego and San Diego County. The Birthplace of California. The American Historical Society. Vol I, p 289.
• Hon. Maud Pauncefote. 1900. “Chapala the Beautiful.” Harper’s Bazar, Volume XXXIII #52, December 29, 1900. p 2231-3.
• The Mexican Herald: 29 Aug 1897; 21 Feb 1900, 5; 18 Nov 1900, 6; 10 Feb 1901, 8; 30 March 1901, 8; 14 July 1901, 17; 28 July, 1901, 17; 19 Aug 1901, 8; 17 April 1902, 8; 18 Nov 1902; 3 March 1904, 7; 1 Sep 1904, 11; 24 Apr 1908; 27 June 1910; 18 August 1914, 5.
• Diario Oficial de la Federación: 19 Jan 1905, 277-278-279; 17 March 1905, 300; 6 April 1905, 663; 13 April 1905; 14 Jan 1908, 150-151; 1 June 1908, 477-8; 14 July 1908, 202-3; 5 Oct 1908, 493.
• The Two Republics: 5 Jan 1898, 6.
• El Imparcial: 5 June 1901.
• Jalisco Times: 10 Apr 1908.
• El Universal, 20 May 1925.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.

Antonio Mólgora was an Italian businessman and hotelier who ran various hotels in Chapala from about 1907 to his death in 1927. Both he and one of his sons, also named Antonio, were accomplished amateur photographers and published a number of postcards, the son generally preferring pictures of boats and people to pictures of buildings. They were almost certainly the first local residents to produce real photographic postcards of Chapala.

At least three postcards must be the work of Antonio Mólgora Sr. (“El Muelle,” “La Plalla” [sic] and “La Reynera”) while many more can definitely be attributed to his son, Antonio Mólgora Jr. There is no evidence that either Mólgora ever tried to commercialize any photographs of other places; their Chapala postcards were presumably given or sold to visitors in the hotels owned or managed by Antonio Sr.

The numbering on some of the father’s postcards suggests there are likely to be many more photos of Chapala still waiting to be found and attributed to him!

Antonio Mólgora Sr. ca 1911. El Muelle.

Antonio Mólgora Sr.

Antonio Mólgora (Sr.) was born at Novara, Italy, in 1877. He was one of at least eight children born there to Clemente Mólgora Declerechi (1841-1900), a pork butcher, and his wife, Paulina de Ferrari (1852-1931). One of Antonio’s uncles, Enrique Mólgora (ca 1840-1900), had established himself and his family in Mexico in the 1870s, and Enrique’s brother—Antonio’s father—followed him to Mexico with his family in the 1890s.

In 1900, Antonio married 19-year-old María Espinosa Gómez in Chihuahua. The couple had two sons: Clemente Mólgora Espinosa (1901-1981) and Antonio Héctor Mólgora Espinosa (1903-1980). Clemente, who married a local Chapala girl in about 1927, is mentioned in Journey with Genius, the account by poet Witter Bynner of visiting Chapala in 1923 in the company of D. H. Lawrence. (Bynner later bought a house in the village and was a regular visitor for decades.)

It is unclear what Antonio Mólgora (father) did before becoming manager of the Gran Hotel Victor Huber in Chapala in about 1906. But, roughly three years later, he bought this hotel, originally named for its owner, and renamed it the Hotel Francés. Located immediately opposite the church, it was demolished at the end of the 1940s when the wide main boulevard (Avenida Francisco I. Madero) was created.

In 1919, Mólgora also took over the management of the Hotel Palmera. Part of this building, designed by Guillermo de Alba and completed in 1907, later became the Hotel Nido, and is now the Presidencia, housing Chapala municipal offices.

In March 1921 a vacationer wrote on a Mólgora postcard to friends in New Orleans that, besides having a good time, they had felt their first earthquake – “We all dressed and went down stairs. Thought the next shake would bring down the building.” a reference, presumably, to the 6.4 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Colima on 1 May 1921, an event fortunately without any casualties.

In about 1924, Mólgora bought and took over the running of the Hotel Arzapalo; it was promptly renamed the Hotel Mólgora. The Arzapalo had opened in 1898 as the town’s first major hotel, but had operated only intermittently during the Mexican Revolution before reopening in the 1920s.

Antonio Mólgora Sr., photographer, hotelier and ardent supporter of the Italian community in Guadalajara, died in his adopted home of Chapala on 9 October 1927.

Antonio Mólgora Jr.

Antonio Hector Mólgora (1903-1980) married in 1931 and had at least three children, including Jorge Enrique Mólgora Gil, an artist and architect who has designed or co-designed several projects in Chapala and Ajijic since the 1980s.

Antonio Hector Jr took numerous fine photographs of Chapala from about 1920 onward, at least 20 of which were published as postcards. His father promoted his hotels by offering special rates for excursion groups, and this photo of a passenger boat (below) may have been taken to document a special excursion group from Guadalajara.

Antonio Hector Mólgora. ca 1922? Passenger boat, Lake Chapala.

Antonio Mólgora Jr. also documented the huts used by fishermen at Chapala, including one on Isla de los Alacranes. It is unclear if this example (below) was taken on the island or somewhere closer to the town of Chapala:

Antonio Hector Mólgora. ca 1922? Fisherman’s hut, Lake Chapala.

This Mólgora postcard (with “MOLGORA” in block letters) of typical freight-carrying “sail canoes” or canoas (below) is evocative of the era in which D. H. Lawrence and his friends visited in 1923.

Antonio Hector Mólgora (probably). Date unknown. Boats on Lake Chapala.

Acknowledgment

My sincere thanks to Jorge Enrique Mólgora Gil for helping clarify which photographs were the work of his father, Antonio Hector Mólgora Espinosa.

My 2022 book Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to tell the incredible story of how Lake Chapala became an international tourist and retirement center.

Note: This post was first published 3 August 2019.

Sources:

• El Correo de Jalisco: 9 January 1907.
• El Informador: 15 September 1918, 2; 30 November 1919; 7 March 1920, 10; 1 July 1921, 7; 12 March 1926.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.

Pedro Magallanes López was a Guadalajara photographer, active from the mid-1880s until the start of the 1920s, whose studio was initially located in the city center at Santuario #1, and then at Pedro Loza 17. This latter location was advertised in 1922 as for sale or rent, suggesting that this may be when Magallanes retired.

Best known for his superb portrait work, Magallanes also took several very interesting photographs of Lake Chapala, colorized versions of which were published by the Guadalajara firm of Editores Alba y Fernández. (Among those credited for other postcards of the region in the Alba y Fernández series are J. de Obeso and Manuel Hernández.)

Pedro Magallanes. Undated. Fuerte de Ocotlán.

At the start of Magallanes’ career, the town of Ocotlán, on the main railroad line between Mexico City and Guadalajara, was still one of the major routes via which visitors reached the town of Chapala. Near Ocotlán, the resort known as Ribera Castellanos, built in the first decade of the twentieth century, attracted lots of tourists, especially those looking to hunt or fish.

Relatively little is known about the life of Pedro Magallanes López. He was born on 23 August 1863, the son of Pedro Magallanes and Petra López, and married Herminia del Castillo, then aged 20, in January 1887. The couple had four children. Sadly, his first wife died in December 1894.

Four years later, Magallanes took Clotilde Castellanos as his second wife. Clotilde, 30 years old at the time of their marriage in Guadalajara on 24 August 1898, gave birth to a daughter, also named Clotilde, on 4 March 1900, and to a son, José Manuel, on 1 April 1902.

Magallanes’ marriage to Clotilde, who had been present as a guest at his first marriage, clearly cemented his ties to the extensive and influential Castellanos clan, and Magallanes became the family’s official portraitist (see the article by Beatriz Bastarrica Mora). He took numerous formal portraits of family members and groups, as well as many unusually informal photos of the family vacationing at Lake Chapala. Some of these show the family’s domestic workers and several include local residents in the background.

Pedro Magallanes. c 1910. View of Chapala from Villa Carmen.

Magallanes’ studio in Guadalajara was only one of several photo studios that thrived in Guadalajara at the time. The reverse of his photos included an elaborately drawn logo of an arch, bright rays of light, flower pots and flowers emblazoned with the photographer’s name. Many prints also included a statement saying that the negatives were kept on file to allow for future repeat orders. As Alberto Gómez Barbosa has pointed out, this is indicative of the importance Magallanes attached to marketing and maintaining clients.

Magallanes died in Guadalajara on 6 September 1928. In 1930 his widow, Clotilde (aged 63), was living in the city with several unmarried relatives, including Clotilde Magallanes (30), Manuel Magallanes (28), M. Maria Magallanes (20) and Beatriz Magallanes (15).

My 2022 book Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to tell the incredible story of how Lake Chapala became such an important international center for tourism and retirement.

Note: This post was first published 4 July 2019.

Sources:

• Beatriz Bastarrica Mora. “El sombrero masculino entre la Reforma y la Revolución mexicanas: materia y metonimia.” Historia Mexicana (Colegio de Mexico). Vol LXIII, Num 4, April-June 2014. Pp 1651-1708.
• Alex G. Contreras. Undated. “Pedro Magallanes” – blog post  [4 July 2018]
• Alberto Gómez Barbosa. 2004. La fotografía en Jalisco. [2nd part], El Informador, 1 August 2004, 13:

Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcomed. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.

Mexican photographer José María Lupercio (1870-1929) took numerous outstanding photos of Lake Chapala at the start of the twentieth century.

Lupercio was born in Guadalajara on 29 December 1870 and was one of the most noteworthy Mexican photographers of his era. Lupercio was one of several fine photographers whose work reached a wide audience because it was used for many early picture postcards of Lake Chapala. While Lupercio was 100% Mexican, many of the other photographers whose images of Lake Chapala illustrated postcards in the early twentieth century—including Charles Betts Waite, Hugo Brehme and Winfield Scott—were foreign-born, as were most of the postcard publishers.

José María Lupercio began his artistic career by studying painting in the Guadalajara studio-workshop of the Brazilian artist Félix Bernardelli, where he was a classmate of such distinguished artists as Gerardo Murillo (Dr. Atl), Rafael Ponce de León and Jorge Enciso.

Bernadelli and friends, 1898

Lupercio developed his photography skills by working with the commercial photographer Octaviano de la Mora (1841-1921) who had his studio in Guadalajara. Despite his humble background, De la Mora, born in Ixtlahuacán de los Membrillos, became one of the most renowned early commercial photographers in Mexico. The quality of his portraiture work was praised by contemporary critics and won him a major award in the third Paris World’s Fair in 1878.

Lupercio took over de la Mora’s Guadalajara studio, located in Portal Matamoros, in 1900 when de la Mora moved to Mexico City to work at the National Archaeology, History and Ethnology Museum. Some years later, Lupercio also moved to Mexico City, and again stepped into de la Mora’s shoes when he took over as the museum’s resident photographer after de la Mora retired.

During Lupercio’s time in Guadalajara he shifted the emphasis of the studio’s commercial work away from the formal portraits initially favored by his mentor towards landscapes and photographs of people posed in their natural, day-to-day surroundings. According to an editorial mention in a local English-language paper in 1904, “José Lupercio, the photographer in Portal Matamoros, offers some beautiful views of the city and republic. His portrait work is unrivalled.”

José María Lupercio. Chapala. c 1905. Published by Juan Kaiser.

Lupercio’s talents brought him great success and he won numerous national and international awards for his work, including a diploma from the French Photographic Society (1898), a silver medal from the 1900 Paris Exposition, a silver medal from the 1901 Panamerican Exhibition in Buffalo, New York, and a gold medal in the 1904 Saint Louis Exposition in Missouri.

The latter achievement was the basis for the text of a 1906 ad for Lupercio’s studio: “Honor for Guadalajara! Native Types of Mexico Took First Premium at St. Louis Exposition. – Lupercio’s – The Finest Views of Guadalajara – Photographs of all Kinds. – José Lupercio, Portal Matamoros #9, Guad.”

Lupercio was a founder member of the Ateneo Libre de Controversias Literarias, Artísticas y Políticas founded by Dr. Atl in Guadalajara in 1916, along with José Othón de Aguinaga, Antonio Pérez Verdía, Ixca Farías and several other local artists and intellectuals.

Many examples of Lupercio’s photographs of Lake Chapala are preserved in the National Archives. More than a dozen of his Chapala photographs were published as postcards in the first decade of the twentieth century, mainly by either Juan Kaiser or Ruhland & Ashclier, though Lupercio also sold his work to several other publishers. Some of the finest images of Chapala taken by Lupercio were used by little-known local publisher Manuel Hernández for postcards printed in Austria, which are of  exceptional quality.

In the year 2000, one particular photograph of Chapala, taken by Lupercio in about 1906, was accorded the rare distinction of being included on a Mexican postage stamp to commemorate the importance of photography in Mexico during the twentieth century. Somewhat surprisingly, this 2000 issue was the first time Lake Chapala had been portrayed on a Mexican stamp.

Mexican postage stamp (2000) with Lupercio photograph of Lake Chapala, c 1906.

In 1916, Lupercio was appointed the official photographer at the National Museum in Mexico City. He subsequently took thousands of photographs of archaeological pieces and other items in the museum’s collections. He also photographed the artwork of his former classmate Dr. Atl in the Escuela de San Pedro y San Pablo, the paintings of Saturnino Herrán, the murals of Diego Rivera and took portraits of many of the celebrities of the time, including Rivera, Atl, Manuel Toussaint, José Vasconcelas and other prominent intellectuals.

Lupercio maintained a private studio in Mexico City at Avenida Madero 42 and began to produce postcards for sale in the National Museum. The postcard photographs portrayed ethnographic themes as well as ancient codices, archaeological sites and historic monuments. His production was prolific. For example in 1922, he produced no fewer than 2,564 different postcards! But this was not even his peak level of activity. Astoundingly, between July 1925 and July 1926, he produced 8,229 distinct postcards!

Ever an adventurous individual, Lupercio not only found time for his painting and photography but also worked on theater sets and participated in bullfighting, car racing and flying.

Examples of Lupercio’s superb photographs are preserved in many public and private collections, including those of the Instituto Cultural Cabañas in Guadalajara, the National Anthropology Museum in Mexico City and the National Archives in Pachuca, Hidalgo.

Lupercio remained the official photographer at the National Museum until his death in Mexico City on 2 May 1929.

My 2022 book Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to tell the incredible story of how Lake Chapala became an international tourist and retirement center.

Note: This post was first published 2 July 2019.

Sources:

• Raúl Aceves. 2005. “La tarjeta postal ilustrada en México durante la época clásica (1896-19015).” Boletín Filatélico Guadalajara, Año 8, No 17, 2005, 3-19.
• Arturo Guevara Escobar. 2011.”Letra L. Fotógrafos y productores de postales” Blog Post, dated 10 November 2011.
• Francisco Javier Ibarra. 2005. “José María Lupercio: espejo de la memoria IV.” El Informador, 24 July 2005, 13-B.
• El Informador: 27 February 1966.
• Jalisco Times: 14 May 1904; 5 January 1906.

Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcomed. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.

Among the very few early images of Chapala that depict village people going about their everyday lives, is this postcard from about 1910 entitled (on its reverse side) “Chapala. Un mercado en México – Mexican market.”

Photographer unknown. Postcard published by Juan Kaiser. “Chapala-Market in Mexico”. c 1910.

The postcard was published by Juan Kaiser. Given that Kaiser lived in Guadalajara, he was somewhat loose with his titles and his geography. The postcard actually shows an open-air market in the village of El Salto, much closer to Guadalajara than to Chapala! The building to the left of the open-air market in the image is the former tienda de raya (hacienda store) in El Salto, Jalisco, near Juanacatlán Falls; the building is now the town’s Centro Cultural.

In his defense, Kaiser was a savvy businessman and postcards such as this one were clearly designed to appeal to a much broader audience than only those visiting El Salto. The market vendors displaying their wares on the sidewalk and prospective purchasers inspecting the fresh produce made for a timeless scene.

Fortunately for Chapalaphiles, there are several early descriptions of the market in Chapala, including this one by Polish traveler Vitold de Szyszlo who witnessed the real Chapala market in 1910:

On the dusty road appeared groups of horsemen. They were selling milk, fruit and vegetables, trotting, loaded with baskets and containers of various sizes. Large cowboy hats completely masked their faces; a blue shirt with pants of the same color and leather huaraches completed their attire. Country girls with olive complexions and braids black as ebony, carefully tied on the nape of the neck, followed, sometimes sitting two on the same mule or donkey, like proud Amazons. Others, darker skinned, let the ivory of their pearly white teeth show through their gracious smiles and the blazing heat of the Andalusian gypsy show through their burning gaze while their silvery voices resounded in harmonious bursts of laughter.

The market, in the center of the village, is the meeting point of all these colourful people. Under multicoloured awnings are mounted pyramids of fruit and vegetables, bananas, oranges, lemons, watermelons, melons, papayas, mameyes, lettuces, sweet potatoes, red and hot peppers. Elsewhere, zealous merchants offer fresh tortillas and tamales of golden cooked corn, and pulque, the smell of which fills one with intense repulsion.

On the other side of the square, cluttered stalls display sombreros, wool sarapes and leather huaraches.”

More details of Vitold de Szyszlo and his visit to Chapala can be found in chapter 55 of  my Lake Chapala Through the Ages: an anthology of travellers’ tales.

Source

• Szyszlo, Vitold de. 1913. Dix mille kilomètres à travers le Mexique, 1909-1910. Paris: Plon-Nourrit et Cie., pp 235-236; translation by Marie-Josée Bayeur.

Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcomed. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.