DURANGO.- A photographic archive comprising some 130,000 negatives is being reconsidered as one of the most important visual records of Fresnillo, Zacatecas, documenting the transformation of the historic mining community and the lives of generations of its residents.

The archive was created by photographer Ricardo Sánchez Ortega (1911–2000), whose studio became such a familiar presence in Fresnillo that photography specialist Juan Carlos Basabe Bañuelos remarked that a true Fresnillo household would typically have one of Sánchez Ortega’s portraits hanging on its walls.

Basabe, head of Communications at the Zacatecas Center of Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History, discussed the photographer’s legacy during the International Colloquium on the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro in Durango. His research focuses on Sánchez Ortega and the enormous photographic collection that eventually gave rise to the Pedro Valtierra State Photo Library of Zacatecas.

Around 40,000 of the archive’s negatives have so far been catalogued and digitized, according to Basabe. The work has been advanced through the efforts of photographer Pedro Valtierra Ruvalcaba and his foundation, together with the Zacatecan Institute of Culture, which is responsible for safeguarding the collection.

Sánchez Ortega’s life and career were closely tied to the communities of the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro. Born in Tlalpujahua, Michoacán, he moved around 1927 or 1928 to Noria de San Pantaleón in Sombrerete, Zacatecas. There, while working as an assayer, he began developing his knowledge of photography and recording the mining landscape and the families who inhabited it.





In 1936, Sánchez Ortega and his wife, Carmen Camacho, moved to Fresnillo, where he opened the studio that would become the center of his professional life. It was also a family enterprise. Their eight children worked there at different times, and their eldest daughter, Esther, became an accomplished assistant and hand-colorist. Several of her sisters also learned photographic coloring and later worked in studios in Durango and Puebla.

Sánchez Ortega sharpened his portraiture skills through correspondence courses offered by Eastman Kodak, eventually developing a studio practice that became deeply embedded in the social life of Fresnillo. Residents arrived dressed in their best clothes for portraits marking festivals, matachines processions, baptisms and first communions, as well as visits to the nearby Sanctuary of the Santo Niño de Atocha.

His was not the only photographic business operating in Fresnillo. Other studios included those of José Antonio Bustamante, Fotografía González and Foto Lux. Yet Sánchez Ortega’s studio became the city’s dominant photographic institution.

The importance of the archive lies not only in its scale but also in the continuity of the world it records. Images produced between 1942 and 1985 trace Fresnillo’s development from mining town to city while preserving the faces, clothing, celebrations, religious traditions and family milestones of its residents.

Basabe presented examples of Sánchez Ortega’s visual language at the Francisco Villa Museum in Durango, describing the photographer as a builder of the visual memory of the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro.

Sánchez Ortega died on February 24, 2000. What remains is an extensive silver-gelatin legacy that, in Basabe’s words, allowed the people of Fresnillo to see themselves reflected across decades of profound social and urban change.