John Mraz

John Mraz (California, 1943) is a historian of modern mass media and a photographer.

Mraz has written books and articles that do history of and through photography. He has directed documentary films, videotapes and digital productions about historical subjects, and has analyzed the portrayal of history in feature films. He has also been curator of major historical photographic exhibits. Mraz received a Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Santa Cruz (1986).

He moved to Mexico in 1981, and is a research professor in the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Puebla (Mexico). He has been a visiting professor and research fellow in Princeton, Oxford, Dartmouth College, Barcelona, Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo, Auckland, the Harry Ransom Center of U. Texas, the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and other institutions.

Historian Paul Vanderwood asserted, “John Mraz is considered one of the history profession’s most astute students of visual culture”.

Mraz’s books have focused largely on analyzing photographs taken in Mexico, and historian Jurgen Buchenau wrote that he is “widely considered the preeminent expert on the history of Mexican photography".

Historian John Lear attested to his pioneering status: “John Mraz began studying the modern visual culture of Latin America back when few historians took the field seriously”. His first monograph, Nacho López, was said by reviewer Seth Fein to “answer virtually all of the obvious (but difficult) questions that usually go not only frustratingly unanswered but unasked in photographic histories". Ignacio Sánchez Prado argued that Mraz’s book, Looking for Mexico: Modern Visual Culture and National Identity, “Is without doubt the best introduction available on Mexican visual studies, and the necessary point of departure for any readers seeking to familiarize themselves with the body of work on that subject as it exists”. That book was described by Rubén Gallo, Director of Latin American Studies at Princeton University, as “the definitive history of Mexican photography...brilliantly researched, passionately argued, and beautifully written;” on the back cover of another book by Mraz, Gallo affirmed “John Mraz is undoubtedly the world expert on Mexican photography”.

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