Tomas van Houtryve: Lines and Lineage
With his pictures, he homes in on the historical amnesia that envelops not just the Mexican-American War but so much else of America’s past, effectively enabling our new era of intolerance.
– Simon Romero, New York Times
There is no photographic record of the period when Mexico ruled what is now the American West. To visualize the people and places from the remarkable yet unseen Mexican era, photographer Tomas van Houtryve photographed the region with glass plates and a nineteenth-century wooden camera. Van Houtryve pairs portraits of direct descendants of early inhabitants of the West—mestizo, Afro-Latin, indigenous, Crypto-Jewish—with photographs of landscapes along the original border and architecture from the Mexican period. This book challenges dominant Western mythologies and questions the role that photographs (both present and missing) have played in shaping the identity of the West.
This book has four covers, each featuring a different portrait on the front and a landscape on the back. Trade copies are chosen at random; for signed copies, please choose either Bernadette, Dorothy, Gomeo, or Nathan below.
With his pictures, he homes in on the historical amnesia that envelops not just the Mexican-American War but so much else of America’s past, effectively enabling our new era of intolerance.
– Simon Romero, New York Times
There is no photographic record of the period when Mexico ruled what is now the American West. To visualize the people and places from the remarkable yet unseen Mexican era, photographer Tomas van Houtryve photographed the region with glass plates and a nineteenth-century wooden camera. Van Houtryve pairs portraits of direct descendants of early inhabitants of the West—mestizo, Afro-Latin, indigenous, Crypto-Jewish—with photographs of landscapes along the original border and architecture from the Mexican period. This book challenges dominant Western mythologies and questions the role that photographs (both present and missing) have played in shaping the identity of the West.
This book has four covers, each featuring a different portrait on the front and a landscape on the back. Trade copies are chosen at random; for signed copies, please choose either Bernadette, Dorothy, Gomeo, or Nathan below.
With his pictures, he homes in on the historical amnesia that envelops not just the Mexican-American War but so much else of America’s past, effectively enabling our new era of intolerance.
– Simon Romero, New York Times
There is no photographic record of the period when Mexico ruled what is now the American West. To visualize the people and places from the remarkable yet unseen Mexican era, photographer Tomas van Houtryve photographed the region with glass plates and a nineteenth-century wooden camera. Van Houtryve pairs portraits of direct descendants of early inhabitants of the West—mestizo, Afro-Latin, indigenous, Crypto-Jewish—with photographs of landscapes along the original border and architecture from the Mexican period. This book challenges dominant Western mythologies and questions the role that photographs (both present and missing) have played in shaping the identity of the West.
This book has four covers, each featuring a different portrait on the front and a landscape on the back. Trade copies are chosen at random; for signed copies, please choose either Bernadette, Dorothy, Gomeo, or Nathan below.
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Photography by Tomas van Houtryve
Text by Carrie GibsonHardcover
10 x 12 inches
160 pages /80 images
Trade ISBN: 9781942185628 (cover chosen at random)
Choice of cover for signed books. -
Tomas van Houtryve (b. 1975) is a Belgian-American artist based in Paris. He uses a wide range of contemporary and early techniques, continually questioning and reinventing his approach to image-making. Drawing from his background in philosophy and investigative journalism, his multidisciplinary projects challenge our notions of memory, identity and power. Lines and Lineage (2019) precedes van Houtryve's second Radius book, 36 Views of Notre Dame is van Houtryve’s second Radius book (2024).