Mexican Crime Photographs from the Archive of Stefan Ruiz
Stefan Ruiz's Mexican Crime Photographs publishes a found police-style archive from Mexico City: over 100 mugshots, robbery stills and drawn portraits of criminals and stolen jewelry from the late 1950s to the early 1970s.
In 2010 Ruiz came across the photographs on a stall at La Lagunilla, the thrift market in Mexico City. Over six months he met the seller repeatedly and bought more of the collection each time. Many of the images are damaged, some are kept in their original groups, and all carry handwritten annotations in white. Ruiz never learned the source, though the photographs probably come from the city's police archives. The book adds an essay by Benjamin Smith, a historian of Latin America at the University of Warwick, who reads the material against the return of the PRI in 2012 and Mexico's continuing news of crime, police corruption and impunity. It is a 187-page clothbound hardback, 160 × 120 mm, published by GOST Books in November 2015.
Ruiz is a Berlin-based photographer. His book San Francisco Berlin (Boot, 2011) is also in the library.
