Basis of Cataloging in Mexican photographic archives

Abstract

This paper shows some examples of the inconsistencies that are present in the respective instruments of consultation of the Mexican photographic archives; from analyzing the ways of making available to the public hundreds of copies attributed to Winfield Scott and Charles B. Waite, American photographers who worked in Mexico at the beginning of the 20th century. It is hypothesized that an early valuation of the "aesthetic" quality of this photographic production made it possible to organize the photographs according to art history criteria, leaving aside the proposals of the documentation sciences. In order to avoid inconsistencies in the contents of the access instruments, this work highlights the need to create documentary groups in the process of cataloguing photographic collections. This proposal contributes in a practical way to avoid the most evident problems that exist in catalogs, after standardizing the information of all photographic objects that share the same index image or that correspond to the same photographic session, we will obtain a consistent and congruent textual representation of these documents. However, the main objective of this text is to put at the center of the discussion the fundamentals that currently prevail in the criteria for the creation of catalogs of the three most important photographic archives in Mexico: to consider each photograph as an individual work of art, leaving aside the analysis as documents created in specific processes and contexts.