Nacho Lopez - Fotoperidista Mexicano

Nacho Lopez

Ignacio “Nacho” López Bocanegre was born in 1923 in the city of Tampico, Mexico. He spent most of his childhood traveling around Mexico City, Merida, and Orizaba. Nacho Lopez lived in the city of Merida during socialist protest, which changed the young and rebel Ignacio; according to him, he used to march on those socialist demonstrations screaming “Arriba victimas hambrientas (hail hungry victims)”.

Graduated from Instituto de Artes y Ciencias Cinematograficas de Mexico (Mexican Institute of Arts and Cinematographic Sciences) in the year of 1947, where he learned to master all the photographic techniques for journalism and advertising. He also created his own style.

Historian John Mraz says that the name of Nacho Lopez can be placed together with a very limited group of photographers in the world who combine the aesthetic search and social commitment, and those who can be named are Tina Modotti, Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Sebastião Salgado, Paolo Gasparini, and Eugene Smith - the photojournalist Nacho Lopez admired the most.

Another factor that marked Nacho Lopez was the Mexican mural movement during the 30’s (Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros), which pursued to rescue the glorious past and the concern for the present and future of indigenous peoples of Mexico. Since his beginnings as a photographer, Nacho Lopez showed interest in the natives of Mexico, and his first job as a photojournalist was to shoot the “Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Death)” celebration in a small town of Mexican natives (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1 Noche de Muertos by Nacho Lopez, 1950

Ignacio Lopez showed us a Mexico City like no one else. During the 50’s the capital of Mexico had no smog, no traffic, a city with 2-3 million people, and no skyscrapers. His photos show no luxury, without elegance, just everyday life of its inhabitants. He traveled with his camera in hand shooting the streets, bars, churches, popular corners and slums of Mexico City. These photos could be compared to The Americans by Robert Frank, because it showed a different America, the other side of the coin. The everyday life, class and race difference, the true America of the 50’s.

Fig. 2 Photo from “The Americans” by Robert Frank

The unceasing interest of Nacho Lopez for the children is manifested in several pictures of his photo-essays. The children do not show joy, but on the contrary, shame. Nacho presents us some pictures of dirty children of slums, whose indigenous faces are shrinked with pain. One of his most famous photos is about two children holding hands going downstairs from a dark place (Fig. 3), this photo was inspired by The Walk to Paradise Garden by W. Eugene Smith 1946 (Fig. 4).

Fig. 3 No title by Nacho Lopez,

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