UC Irvine

University of California, Irvine 2015

Professor Cécile Whiting, Chair

American Moderns and Mexico: Interwar Aesthetics and Visual Culture South of the Border investigates the allure of Mexico during the interwar period for modern American photographers, with a focus on Edward Weston and Paul Strand. This is an important study because American Moderns and Mexico: Interwar Aesthetics and Visual Culture South of the Border examines how Mexico transformed Edward Weston's photography aesthetically and was instrumental to the development of Paul Strand's political activism. More specifically, American Moderns and Mexico: Interwar Aesthetics and Visual Culture South of the Border will discuss how Weston's and Strand's art contributed to visual expressions of Mexican ideas on nationhood and formed part of Mexico's cultural esthetic. In other words, Weston and Strand were transformed by their residency in Mexico, and at the same time their photographs promoted certain ideas about Mexico in both Mexico and the United States.

In this project I will be arguing that traveling to Mexico was an important interlude in the lives of Weston and Strand because Mexico was a place that nurtured and changed their visual production. In American Moderns and Mexico: Interwar Aesthetics and Visual Culture South of the Border I propose that Mexico, and its representations were a site for developing ideas related to modernism that the artists were first exposed to in the United Strand as members of the States. Thus, I will note that prior to visiting Mexico, the two artists had already developed ideas about modernism, many of which were filtered in part through their contact with Alfred Stieglitz. Lastly, this project situates Weston and Mexican avant-garde.