Turn of the Century Texas-Mexico Border and Southwest Vernacular Photo Album Featuring 81 photographs of life in El Paso, Juárez, and New Mexico, 1905-1906

U S. Mexico Border

Photograph

[Texas History][Borderlands] U.S.-Mexico borderlands photograph album, 1905-1906, centered on El Paso and Juárez, with additional views in New Mexico, Arizona, California, Oregon, and Alaska. The album documents an early twentieth-century traveler’s movement through the southern border of the U.S., when El Paso and Ciudad Juárez were being promoted through rail travel, tourism, and cross-border entertainment, and when American visitors regularly treated Mexican religious sites, plazas, bullrings, and street life as part of a border excursion circuit. Its strongest historical value lies in the concentration of images tied to the Texas-Mexico border, including Juárez bullfight and cockfight scenes, street and church views, and domestic group portraits in El Paso, alongside a labeled photograph of a Santo Domingo Pueblo corn dance (likely Kewa Pueblo, north of Albuquerque), showing non-Native travelers recording Indigenous life in the Southwest.

Photograph album containing 81 original photographs, most measuring approximately 2 x 3 to 4 x 5 inches, mounted on thick black paper leaves in a cloth-bound album. Contemporary manuscript captions identify numerous locations and subjects, including “El Paso Tex,” “Juarez Mex,” “Bull Fight,” “Cock Fight,” “Near Albuquerque 1906,” “1906 New Mexico,” “New Mexico 1905,” “Juarez Mex Church over 350 years old,” and “Corn Dance. Santo Domingo.” Visible subjects include family and social group portraits posed on porches and in front of residences; women in white dresses and men in coats, hats, and ties; a tree-lined park path in El Paso; religious architecture and church interiors in Juárez; a fountain identified as Robinson Park in Albuquerque; river and landscape views labeled Rio Grande; a saguaro cactus study; a donkey; a seated elderly woman in a doorway; and multiple arena photographs showing matadors, horses, attendants, spectators, and ring action in Juárez. Several photographs bear later ink inscriptions, including one later image of five men captioned "Alaska" en recto and with names on verso, including "Mayor Goldstein", a prominent Jewish businessman and six time Juneau Mayor Isadore Goldstein.

The album records border travel encompassing scenes of domestic life in El Paso, tourism in Juárez, and excursions into New Mexico and the wider West. The Juárez images are especially strong, preserving direct vernacular views of public spectacle in the bullring and cockfight pit, as well as church architecture and urban settings seen from the perspective of a visiting American observer. Photographs mounted throughout; some images faded or silvered, with scattered surface wear, corner wear, occasional discoloration, and a few later annotations or tape remnants visible. Overall very good condition.

Item #23154

Price: $1,250.00