In this work of visual analysis and cultural theory, Tejada (art and art history, U. of Texas at Austin) explores moments of photographic production within what he terms the "shared image
environment" of Mexico and the United States as a means of interrogating cross-cultural issues of history, territory, ethnic association, social relations, sexuality, and representation. His
four chapters explore photographs from the Casasola Archive produced between 1910 and 1920 in relation to issues of representation in the writings of philosopher Antonio Caso, the modernist
aesthetics of the New York journal Camera Work, and the art criticism of Mexican artist and theorist Marius de Zayas; sexual difference hybridity in the photographs of Tina Modotti and Edward
Weston and in feminist theory; photographer Manuel Alvarez Bravo and the shared image environment of Mexican modernism, European surrealism, and American cultural entrepreneurship; and
contrasts between archival photographs from a border-region compound of brothels known as Boystown and works by contemporary US Latina image makers as interrogated by Maurice Merleau-Ponty's
category of "flesh." Annotation 穢2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
