Mexico: From Empire to Revolution is a Web resource based on two consecutive exhibitions at the Getty Research Institute in late 2000 and early 2001. The current site presents nineteenth-century photographs suggestive of the romance and the reality of European imperial dreams in Mexico. Images of failed French attempts to establish an empire in Mexico in the 1860s are juxtaposed with images of the ruins of ancient empires. Material that will appear in the Summer of 2001 will document Mexico's emergence as a modern, industrialized nation over the latter half of the nineteenth century, culminating in the tumultuous decade-long revolution that began in 1910.

Reproduced in the digital resource are cabinet cards, cartes de visite, commemorative albums, and documentary photos-all drawn from the collection of the Getty Research Institute. They depict dramatic historical events (such as the European discovery of pre-Hispanic sites, the execution of an emperor, and the victory of the Mexican republic) that came to symbolize Mexico to the outside world. The photographs also provide intimate views of daily life: expressions and gestures of people at work, the clothes they wore, the objects they lived with, and the fabric of their built environment.

The Web site brings together the work of François Aubert, Désiré Charnay, Teobert Maler, Lord Alfred Percival Maudslay, and Augustus Le Plongeon-among the most eminent visual chroniclers of this momentous period in Mexico's history.

Click here to see Mexico: From Empire to Revolution opening reception photo gallery.