Leaving a Trace is Living

Portrait and Permanence: Frank Montero Collado

Published in the catalogue of 1000 Faces/0 Faces/ 1 Face Cindy Sherman, Thomas Ruff, Frank Montero Collado. Fundación Telefónica and La Fábrica, Madrid: 2011

  

This work is an initial approach to the series of portraits of Frank Montero Collado, a very strange figure, unknown until now, who lived in Mexico at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth. The title of this essay was taken from an exhibition held in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1996. A review of this show pointed out that in it, “the exhibitors do not seem to turn to creation as a means of expression but as a tool that has enabled them to relate to themselves.”[1] Except for the obvious time distances, I would venture to propose that Montero’s portraits obey the same logic although they seek to follow and also undertake the opposite. The research behind this essay, as well as the life of the person portrayed, has resembled the constant opening of a matryoshka doll filled with mysteries.

These twenty-three gelatine-silver portraits form a rather peculiar kind of biographical album since they document an equally original life. The photographs are dated from 1855 to 1925, but due to the uniformity of the paper and the size of the sheets as well as the printing technique, we know that most of them are “photos of photos” or, in other words, photographs from the beginning of the twentieth century taken of other nineteenth-century photographs. Frank himself, or perhaps a relative, had the idea to gather together what were probably cartes de visite and send them to be printed in a “more modern” version, attaching them to recent portraits to complete the ensemble.

We don’t know whether the series we are acquainted with is complete or if there are other prints elsewhere. Not one photograph contains a record of where it was made or the photographer who took it. The only information we have, both about Frank and the photos, are the hand-written legends on them, which reveal some passages and data about his life.[2] Characterised according to the occupations mentioned and shown in theatrical, artificial situations and scenarios, Frank Montero Collado and his portraits are an enigma in the photography world. Who was this man? Was this his real name? Was he the intellectual author of the album? Did he himself create the poses, costumes and contexts of the photos? Did Frank Montero experience everything suggested by his portraits? Or should we interpret them as a product of the magic of the nineteenth-century portrait in which the worlds of desire, illusion and fantasy became reality with the help of the theatre supplied by photographic studios?

Laura González and Manolo Laguillo have reflected on the photographic portrait, alleging that it reveals one of the most interesting paradigms in photography: its transparency. When we see a portrait, we don’t think that we are seeing the work of an author, or a photograph but the real person (the subject portrayed). In this way, we obviate the medium and the photographer. They become transparent “to reveal, through mimesis, the person photographed.”[3]  In Montero Collado’s case it is difficult not to focus attention on the person, not only because we lack all information about the photographer, but also because Frank’s life and work are undoubtedly a disturbing enigma.

Catholic seminarian, pioneering Protestant, Methodist missionary, opera singer, journalist and disseminator of Spiritism: Montero Collado was all that. His portraits present us in a micro scale with no totalising pretensions a panorama of the educated classes of nineteenth-century Mexico. Having achieved its independence from Spain after the American and French interventions (1846-1848 and 1861-1866 respectively) and also having lost a good deal of its national territory, the country began to glimpse the foundations of a secular State thanks to the Reform driven by the government of Benito Juárez, who after wandering all over Mexico, returned to the capital and ended the Empire of Maximilian I. In 1877, Porfirio Díaz became president of the Republic for the first time and abandoned this post thirty years later with the advent of the Mexican Revolution. Photography arrived and was developed in this context of deep transformation-adaptation. The boom of the photographic portrait took place, particularly after the appearance of the wet collodion technique.[4]

Frank Montero experienced a good many of these events, and yet his interest in the photographic album was far from that of documenting the dizzying political and social ups and downs of his time, but instead to report the vagaries and greatness of his own life. The paradox I find in these photos is that upon looking at them we think of Frank Montero as a figure who should have been well known during his era. After doing some research, I have found that he obviously wasn’t. Apparently he did not stand out in any of the facets in which he had himself portrayed because, in spite of the fact that information exists on all of them, he is not specifically mentioned in relation to any. Almost a century after the album’s creation, however, Frank Montero is finally achieving his goal. Even though he was not recognised or famous in his time, today his portraits are displayed in an international exhibition and we have even begun to investigate his life.

We do not know when or where Frank Montero was born. There are three portraits that could be termed as “childhood” pictures. Thanks to the first one, which shows Frank at the age of four, we can assume that he was born in 1851 or 1854, since two dates appear on the photograph: 1855 and 1858. This imprecision in terms of the date and the lack of any reference to the place where the photo was taken make it currently impossible to trace Frank’s birth either in church archives or in the incipient civil registries of that era. Nevertheless, Photographs 2 and 3 allow us to induce that Montero belonged to a wealthy nineteenth-century family, located either in the city of Puebla or in the capital of Mexico. According to the information on the photographs, when he was twelve, Frank became a boarder at the “Mathieu du Fossey French School”, and then attended the “French Institute founded by Guilbaut”.

The first of them, founded in Mexico City in 1843 by the French immigrant Mathieu de Fossey, demanded of its students aptitudes that were way above average. In addition to its high cost, admission was limited to those with the best recommendations, and we know that upon leaving the school the students stood out for their knowledge of Latin, French, English, arithmetic and geometry.[5]

As for the “French Institute founded by Guilbaut”, its real name was French-Mexican Lycée. It was founded by Eduardo J. Guilbaut in the city of Puebla in approximately 1851. This type of schools, of a definite Catholic nature and mainly operated by teachers from France’s Barcelonnette region who had settled in the city, was designed for the wealthy classes who could pay from 16 to 35 pesos per month to educate their children.[6] Therefore, its possible that Frank Montero was born in the country’s capital city and after studying at the De Fossey School was sent to Puebla to continue his education at the French-Mexican Lycée.

The images from a second stage (1874-1879) show Montero as a pre-university student, seminarian and professor of Philosophy and Spanish. Worthy of highlighting among these photographs is No. 5 in the series, dated 26 January 1879, in which Montero is described as “founder of the Christian Young People’s Association established in Mexico by Rev. Riley, Brother Manuel Aguas and Brother Agustín Palacios”. This information tells us that Montero Collado participated in the first Protestant groups formed in Mexico, because the three people mentioned were indeed pioneers of Protestantism there.

In spite of the fact that the private practice of beliefs other than the Catholic faith had been permitted since the first years of Mexican independence, the triumph of liberalism was the main point of support for the development of Protestantism in Mexico. In their fight for laicism, liberals sympathised with the Protestant ethic for obvious reasons: the clergy was the synecdoche, not just of a religion but also of the strong conservative political faction. The incursion of Protestantism therefore weakened the Catholic Church’s hegemony. Added to that, “the character of modernity offered by Protestantism, along with the fact that it was the religion practiced most frequently in countries that were models of civilisation, such as England and the United States, was undoubtedly an element that enabled it to be seen favourably.”[7] In this context of political and ideological struggle, the 1857 Constitution and the 1859 Laws of Reform imposed numerous restrictions on the Catholic Church; educational reform and the expropiation of property were the most significant among them.

The first Protestant congregation formed by Mexicans was established by a group of Catholic priests separated from church authorities, who openly supported the liberal movement. Reverend Henry C. Riley, who had arrived in Mexico in 1868 in order to open an Episcopal mission in the country, purchased from the government the recently expropriated San Francisco church where the first public religious ceremonies were held for the Anglican community in 1869.[8] Holding services in Spanish made the English-speaking community separate from the rest of the congregation in 1873. From then on, they were called the “Anglo-Saxon Church”. The first data existing on Agustín Palacios and Manuel Aguas refer to them as Mexicans who sympathised with the United States during the Mexican American War.[9] We also know that before his separation from the “Anglo-Saxon Church”, Manuel Aguas was elected Bishop of the Anglican church founded by Riley, although he died before being consecrated. The failure to consecrate a second bishop turned Riley into the first Bishop of the Church of Jesus in Mexico.[10]

Furthermore, Agustín Palacios was “ecclesiastical judge in the cathedral of the capital of Mexico and afterwards an assistant chaplain to Maximilian of Habsburg.”[11] Palacios separated from the Catholic church and became an Anglican (from 1869 to 1873 he was the Vicar of the Anglican Temple of San José de Gracia[12]) and later turned to Methodism, the faith in which he was a minister and an active member until his death.[13]

At present we don’t know how and when Montero came into contact with these people and the first Protestant groups. It’s plausible to think that after having been an Anglican, he may have turned to the Methodist religion thanks to the influence of Palacios, since Photograph No. 9 (1882) explains that he was “a professor and lecturer in the Methodist mission” of the city of Orizaba.[14] According to the memoires of J. W. Butler, this could perfectly well be right, since the first Methodist services in this city were held in 1873 and by 1880 Bishop H.W. Warren was in charge of a chapel and parish house. In 1888, Butler continues, Agustín Palacios arrived in the Orizaba parish.[15]

In what we could define as a third stage, three portraits from 1882 to 1906 show Frank in his facets as a journalist, opera singer and captain of a Student National Guard. Only one photograph, dated in 1897, “Frank singing the Il Pagliacci opera”, indicates a geographical location (Puebla). In spite of the fact that no documents have been found confirming that Frank Montero participated in any performance (or that the work mentioned was performed in this city), this possibility cannot be excluded since during those years there were two opera companies in Puebla and the last performance of bel canto dates from 1898.[16] Furthermore, by 1897 the work had already been created by its author, Ruggero Leoncavallo and had premiered in Milan in 1892. Regarding the journalistic facet, the photos state that Montero was the founder, owner and publisher of the student newspaper La Guardia Nacional, although there are no copies or any confirmation that it existed in Puebla; however, a newspaper named El Guardia Nacional was published in Tlaltenango, Zacatecas, approximately around 1857.[17] Nonetheless, since it was not a student paper and given the distance from Zacatecas to the centre of Mexico, we have rejected the hypothesis that this is the same newspaper presumably founded by Montero.

From 1904 to 1906, Frank Montero’s portraits continue to show him as a musician and journalist, founder of the Ángela Peralta choral society and a voluntary contributor to the El Popular, El País and El Diario del Hogar newspapers. According to the portraits, in August 1907 Montero Collado made a trip throughout Europe during which he visited Spain, Switzerland and Italy. We do not know the reason for or length of this journey or any further details about it.

From 1906 onward, Frank’s portraits record the period of his incorporation into the Spiritism movement. This doctrine founded in France by Allan Kardec in the mid-nineteenth century had been popularised in Mexico from the decade of the 1870s onward during the full boom of liberalism and freedom of religion, and therefore, in spite of strong opposition from Catholic circles, its principles were disseminated without difficulties in journalistic and academic forums.[18] It is not hard to explain Montero’s successive deference toward the various religions to which he belonged if we consider that the Spiritism ethic had many points in common with Christianity. This was stated in a 1906 article published in El Siglo Espírita, Spiritism’s organ of dissemination in Mexico:

The only difference we find between Spiritism and Catholicism and between Protestantism and Spiritism is the difference between Catholics and Protestants: the details. All three proclaim good, virtue, charity and love of others; they all have such intimate points of contact that it would be difficult to separate them; however, some preach good and practice it and others, although preaching it, forget it in their private lives.[19]

The portraits of 1906 describe Montero as the “initiator and founder of the ‘Esp. Federales’ Association,[20] its president and director of its ‘Lumen’ newspaper for five years”; subsequently he directed the publication El Siglo Espírita, from 1917 to 1923, and was “President of the ‘Soc. Espírita Mexicana’”. From 1923 to 1924, he was “President and director of the ‘Asociación Propagandista del Espiritismo’ and the Instituto Metapsíquico Experimental”.[21] During this period, Frank combined music with his tasks within the Spiritist movement since the references to the Ángela Peralta choral society and its newspaper El Ruiseñor date from between 1904 and 1923. I should clarify that all of this data has not been confirmed since there are no records of a Lumen newspaper in Mexico nor of one called El Ruiseñor.[22]Nevertheless, in 1906 in a publication from El Siglo Espírita, at that time Spiritism’s main organ of binding and dissemination in Mexico, the name F. Montero del Collado appears within the list of people who joined the Federación Espírita Mexicana that year. The list also mentions that Montero contributed the amount of 50 cents monthly to the Federation.[23]

If it happened around 1906, Montero’s integration into Spiritism took place in a period in which the movement had weakened in Mexico. On the one hand, publication of the Revue Spirite stopped in France in 1891 and therefore La Ilustración Espírita, the main organ for disseminating the doctrine was also suspended in Mexico. Furthermore, Porfirio Díaz’s government, at the peak of its power, formed alliances with the Catholic hierarchy that impeded free expression of religious ideas. Nonetheless, the founder of Spiritism in Mexico, Refugio González, still considered Spiritism propaganda to be very active in the country: circles devoted to invocation had spread all over the Republic and some of them had media that disseminated the doctrine. Furthermore in 1906, the Congreso Nacional Espírita was held.  Actually in 1910 – when Francisco I. Madero, who had declared himself to be clearly Spiritist, became Mexico’s president – and onward, the movement continued to have some relevance in Mexican society.[24]

In 1908, El Siglo Espírita published a letter by F. Montero del Collado announcing the foundation of a circle named “The Infinite” located in Calle Quesadas, 10 in Mexico City. It also announced that the circle’s sessions would be: Tuesdays: Cures, Fridays: Communication and Sundays: Experimentation. The letter also indicated that the conditions for belonging to the circle would be the payment of a registration fee of one peso and a monthly fee of fifty cents for upkeep.[25]

In what may have been the last stage of his life, two images from 1925 show Frank Montero Collado in the convent of Churubuscos in Mexico City. A legend on one of them describes him as “The Pilgrim” and one on the other as “Francisco de Paula”. The shift from the studio to the exterior and the contorted gaze are the culmination of a theatricality that grew in crescendo in the twenty-three portraits: the childhood photos comply with all the conventions of the studio portraits of the era, whereas the later photos gradually reach peaks of fantasy and artifice: examples are the bust, the portrait in which he is dressed up for the opera and the one with a kimono and parasol.

Some photos are dedicated to women, although nothing is said about who they were or what relationship they had with the subject of the portrait. Frank never appears in anyone’s company and family relationships are not mentioned; the biography appears to be a search focused more on the interior than on the exterior, more on the intimate than on the social. More than documenting reality, the photographs themselves are a constant spiritual and psychological experimentation that apparently moved Montero throughout his life, leading him to pass through Catholicism and Protestantism, art and Spiritism. The aesthetic value of Frank’s portraits is not found in the simple record of a changing ethos or in the documentation of a specific function of photography as a builder of subjectivity; instead, the aesthetic value is given in that function. Frank Montero, the man of a thousand stages and the same face has left us these images as a record of his existence, with a disturbing eagerness to endure. Following Marc Augé’s idea of forgetfulness as the principle of memory, we can say today that Frank Montero’s portraits have fulfilled their function. An interesting play between the most private universes and the intention to make them public, between recognition of identity and the materialisation of life’s brief time, these portraits leave a trace of Montero Collado’s existence, throwing light on it. But I am convinced that, fortunately, the matryoshka doll still does not let us see our dark subject’s most ineffable secrets.

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[1] Arriola, Magali. “Vivir es dejar huella”. Poliester, Volume 5, Number 17. Mexico: Winter, 1996-7, p. 56.

[2]Due to the calligraphy and ink, we know that the information was written a posteriori on the images all at the same time, which hinders research because most of the dates mentioned are not exact but jotted down based on memories.

[3]González y Laguillo. “Siete reflexiones sobre el retrato”. Luna Córnea, Number 3. Mexico: 1993, p.79.

[4] The arrival of the daguerreotype in Mexico dates from 1839-40; however, the boom in photographic portraits did not take place until the second half of the nineteenth century with the implementation of wet collodion, which lowered production costs, made photography more accessible and expanded its market.

[5] Munguía Escamilla, Estela. “Henri Mathieu de Fossey: colonizador, profesor y escritor”, paper presented in the congress: “Franceses en México, siglos XIX y XX. Entre testimonios e investigación”, Durango, Mexico, Juarez University of the State of Durango and the ICSYH-BUAP, 15-17/October/2008 (article accepted for publication).

[6] Munguía Escamilla, Estela. “Colegios franceses, profesorado y profesores de Barcelonnette en la ciudad de Puebla. Una aproximación, 1850-1910” in Los barcelonettes en México Miradas regionales, siglos XIX-XX. (Leticia Gamboa coord.). Puebla: BUAP, 2008.

[7] Trejo, Evelia. “La Introducción del protestantismo en México. Aspectos diplomáticos”. Estudios de Historia Moderna y Contemporánea de México, Volume 11. Available in http://www.iih.unam.mx/moderna/ehmc/ehmc11/140.html#nf34.

[8] Navarrete, Sarem and Patán Tobío, Constanza (coord). Inventario del Archivo parroquial Antigua Christ Church México, D.F. Mexico: Apoyo al Desarrollo de Archivos y Bibliotecas de México A.C., 2009.

[9] Trejo, Op. cit.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Wesley Butler, John. History of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Mexico. New York : The Methodist Book Concern, 1918.

[12] Trejo Martín, Julio César. “Historia del Templo de san José de Gracia”. Available in http.://catedralanglicanamexico.blogspot.com/2010/03/historia-del-templo-de-san-jose-de.html Marzo, 2010.

[13] Butler, Op. cit.

[14] We do not know for sure whether Montero’s real name was Frank. It is possible that his real name was Francisco and that he changed it to English, since the name Frank was fairly unknown in nineteenth-century Mexico. The change probably was due to Montero’s contact with the Methodist and Anglican churches, which had both originated in English-speaking countries. This practice of name changes was also common among Mexicans who converted to Protestantism during this period. As shown later, the only reference that we have to this man does not provide his given name and his surname appears as Montero del Collado. In this article I have decided to call him Frank Montero Collado since that is the name appearing on the photographs.

[15] During this research I have consulted the archives of the Methodist Church of Mexico from 1880 to 1889 without finding any reference whatsoever to Frank Montero. Nonetheless, these files enabled me to confirm what J.W. Butler stated in his memoires of the Methodist Church of Mexico.

[16] Cordero y Torres, Enrique. Historia compendiada del Estado de Puebla, Volume III. Puebla: Bohemia Poblana, 1965, pp 364-369.

[17] Martha Celis de la Cruz. Publicaciones periódicas mexicanas del siglo XIX, 1822-1855: Fondo Antiguo de la Hemeroteca Nacional y Fondo Reservado de la Biblioteca Nacional de México (Colección Lafragua). Mexico: UNAM, 2000, p 567.

[18] Tortolero Cervantes, Yolia. El Espiritismo seduce a Francisco I Madero. Mexico: CONACULTA/FONCA, 2003, p.49.

[19] El Siglo Espírita. Órgano de difusión del espiritismo en México. Mexico City, Volume, 1 Number 6, May 24, 1906, p. 3.

[20] We believe the abbreviation means “Federal Spiritists”.

[21] Photographs 14, 17 and 21.

[22] However, a record does exist of a periodical titled “Lumen” of a Spiritist nature from that same era in Barcelona, Spain.

[23]El Siglo Espírita. Órgano de difusión del espiritismo en México. Volume 1, Number 5. Mexico City: June 7, 1906, p. 7.

[24] Tortolero. Op. cit., pp 70-71.

[25] El Siglo Espírita. Órgano de difusión del espiritismo en México, Volume III. Number 5. Mexico City: July 15, 1908. 

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