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.” 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. 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.” 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.
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.
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. 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.” 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. 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. 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.
Furthermore, Agustín Palacios was “ecclesiastical judge in the cathedral
of the capital of Mexico
and afterwards an assistant chaplain to Maximilian of Habsburg.” 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) and later turned to Methodism, the faith in which he
was a minister and an active member until his death.
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. 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.
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. 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. 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. 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.
The portraits of 1906 describe Montero as the
“initiator and founder of the ‘Esp. Federales’ Association, 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”. 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.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.
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.
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.
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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