One of the greatest fears of human beings is, without a doubt, death. All reflections around it and its resulting uncertainty is what gives a special tone to all cultural concepts about it. How do people bid farewell to the dead?, with huge carpets of cempasúchil?, with a brass band or a great banquet? It is said that in Mexico, one of the great cultural traditions is the celebration of death, but in reality we either celebrate it or fear it.
In Mexico’s collective memory there is a common belief in inexplicable phenomena associated with nature that has no logical explanation. This is how legends and myths arise, from the roots of these beliefs rituals are born, which later become traditions that are passed on from generation to generation.
Mexico’s prehispanic culture believed in Mictlán, which for the ancient inhabitants meant ‘In the land of the dead’. This mythological place beyond death consisted of nine realms that extended beneath the earth and faced north, it implied that all those who died from natural causes would go there and complete a series of tests in the company of a dog that would be incinerated along with its master. The trials consisted of going in between two mountains that collided against each other, crossing a road where a snake lived, leaving behind eight páramos (cold and lonely places) and eight collados (hills or mountains), and facing a ‘strong’ wind. After four years of these ‘paths’, the wandering ‘life’ of the deceased was over and they would be able to cross a wide and fast-flowing river while riding on the back of their dog.
Once the journey was over, the dead could appear before Mictlantecutli (Lord of Death) and Mictecacihuatl (Lady of Death). These gods of the Mictlán share the function of ruling and administering those who have died. In this realm of death, according to mythology, there were no doors and windows. Prehispanic inhabitants were not afraid of Mictlantecutli, they were really frightened by the uncertainty that involved the life of man, they called it Tezcatlipoca (the two most accepted meanings for this word are: the Sorcerers and the God of the Night). This god represents evil and was one of the most feared deities of this prehispanic culture).
After the Spanish Conquest and evangelization, the tradition of taking photographs of the dead quickly arrived to Mexico. The act of photographing lifeless people has pre-photographic precedents from the Renaissance, in which the technique consisted of a portrait by painting in the so-called momento mori, a phrase that derives from Latin and means “remember that you are mortal”.
There was a man in Mexico around 1880 who became a friend of death, which often visited him in his studio and became its private photographer: Romualdo Garcia, who with his camera captured the faces and last expressions of the dead in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the state of Guanajuato.
Post-mortem photography was another of the traditions that Mexicans adopted, it had the purpose of preserving a memory of the last moment “living with the loved one” and Romualdo was in charge of immortalizing that moment which reminds, at every glance, of the mortal condition.
Hands together as if they were praying, babies in their mother’s lap or lying down as if they were sleeping were some of the poses held by dead children, who were also his “specialty“; little ones immortalized in their mother’s lap, in their father’s arms, godparents or siblings.
Romualdo García was born in Silao, Guanajuato. It was in the state capital where he entered the school of “Artes y Oficios.” There he studied painting and music, becoming a professional musician for several years. In the 80’s he took up photography and in 1887 he publicly opened his studio, located at 34 Cantarranas Street, in the first square of the city. He took portraits of all segments of Guanajuato’s population: children, men, women, the elderly, people with dead children, and so on. Thus, he became its photographer by excellence and continued to eternalize the looks and gestures, the clothing, even the features of the dead.
“Romualdo García gives us an excellent overview of the social fabric that marked Guanajuato at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. The dreams and aspirations of an emerging society can be perceived in this photographic archive. Hence its extraordinary value that transcends the aesthetic to become an unparalleled testimony”.
This story was originally published in Spanish by Cultura Colectiva.
