Héctor García Cobo

Hector Garcia Cobo (August 23, 1923 – June 2, 2012) was a Mexican photographer/photojournalist who had a sixty-year career chronicling Mexico’s social classes, Mexico City and various events of the 20th century, such as the 1968 student uprising. He was born poor but discovered photography in his teens and early 20’s, deciding to study it seriously after his attempt to photograph the death of a coworker failed. He was sent to the Academia Mexicana de Artes y Ciencias Cinematográficas by magazine director Edmundo Valdés who recognized García’s talent. Most of García's career was related to photojournalism, working with publications both inside and outside of Mexico. However, a substantial amount of his work had more artistic and critical qualities. Many of these were exhibited in galleries and museums, with sixty five individual exhibitions during his lifetime. This not only included portraits of artists and intellectuals (including a famous portrait of David Alfaro Siqueiros at Lecumberri Prison) but also portraits of common and poor people. He was also the first photojournalist to explicitly criticize Mexico’s elite, either making fun of them or contrasting them to the very poor.

Héctor García Cobos was born on August 23, 1923 in Mexico City to Amparo Cobo Soberanes from the State of Mexico and Ramiro García do Porto from Portugal. He grew up in the poor and dangerous Candelaria de los Patos neighborhood in a house that has since been replaced by apartment buildings. His family was extremely poor. He received little formal education as a youth, with his mother teaching him how to read. As a child, he much preferred to wander the streets of his neighborhood, and even beyond to meet and talk to people. This led to his mother calling him “pata de perro” (lit. dog’s foot), which later became the title of his autobiography. His propensity to escape from the house even drove his mother to tie him to the bed, but he said that he always found a way to escape. As a young child he went as far as the air field that was in the Balbuena section of the city, selling gum to the aviators. He was adopted as a “mascot” and even given a ride in one of the planes when he was only six. At age seven, he hitchhiked his way to Veracruz .

In 1937, when he was fourteen, he was sent to a juvenile correctional facility in Tlalpan, where he remained until he was eighteen. Here, he received his first camera, a gift from one of the facility’s directors.

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