Image and Memory: Photography from Latin America, 1866-1994.
Edited by Wendy Watriss and Lois Parkinson Zamora.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998. 450 pages.
ISBN: 0-292-79118-6.
The publication of Image and Memory has been in the works since 1992 when FotoFest in Houston was mainly devoted to photography from Latin America. 
Like the exhibitions then, this bilingual book does not pretend to be either a formal history or a comprehensive survey of the subject. The selections reflect rather the personal and idiosyncratic taste of FotoFest founder and curator Wendy Watriss. Her criteria is simply to choose photographers whose culture and heritage are at the very core of their art. These entries are anchored by her introduction and supported by three additional essays — on 19th century photography, contemporary photography, and the photographic image in Latin America. There is also a bibliography, as well as biographies of the artists.
Photography in Latin America during the 19th century essentially follows a European model. Pioneer photographers document the landscape and pre-Columbian monuments as members of scientific expeditions; itinerant daguerreotypists introduce both the portrait and carte-de visite to the middle class; and visiting foreigners record people and places for their exoticism. Photographic activity in major cities is largely a commercial venture, and the medium is utilized as an indispensable tool for propaganda soon after its introduction to the area.
During the 20th century, documentary photography seems to emerge as one of the leading expressions from the region. Images of revolutions and civil wars preserve as a matter of public record these historical events, and photographers are often labeled as socially committed artists of leftist politics. Such portrayal may not be entirely accurate since many of these same photographers are also thought as ethnographers, sociologists, and cultural anthropologists. Photography of the last 25 years is not easily classified by a single common concern. Cultural diversity in Latin America creates unique visual representations in a variety of photographic modes, from the historical and documentary to the experimental and alternative.
Guatemala’s contribution to the general history of photography in the Americas is marked in the book by two sections entirely devoted to photographers Juan José de Jesús Yas (The Colonial Legacy) and Luis González Palma (Imprint of Time). The familiar images of clerics and churches taken by Yas in La Antigua are not only icons and classics of religious photographs but true national treasures. González Palma’s staged compositions of large casts of indigenous people depict a peculiar perception of the real and imaginary that has become almost synonymous throughout the world with photography in Latin American today.
There is not an abundance of books at the moment on photography in Latin America, and a history or survey is still much needed in both English and Spanish. Image and Memory fills a gap. The photographs speak for themselves, but the text can easily cloud the overall presentation with some pretty puzzling discussions. There is no reason to complicate the subject at hand by an academic exercise on semantics, including technical terms from Jurij M. Lotman, as is the case of the essay on photographic image. Readers mainly want to know who are these photographers, and what sets them apart from others in the world — and they want to see plenty of pictures. On that last point, this volume gets high marks.