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Pedro Meyer: Los cohetes duraron todo el día (The Rockets Went on All Day)

Publisher: Mexico City: Petróleos Mexicanos, 1988
Edition: 1st Edition
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN: 9686164359
Condition: Fine / Fine
Item #: 105749

$1,950.00

Specifics

First edition, first printing. Hardcover. Black laminated cloth-covered boards with title stamped in gold on cover and spine, with photographically illustrated dust jacket. Photographs and preface (in Spanish) by Pedro Meyer. Introduction (in Spanish) by Francisco Rojas G., Director General, Pemex. Additional text (in Spanish) quoting individuals pictured in the book. Includes a list of plates. 152 pp., with 163 black-and-white plates finely printed in Mexico by Artes Gráficas Panorama, S.A. de C.V. 15-3/4 x 11-1/4 inches. This first edition was limited to 5000 copies.

[Cited in Martin Parr and Gerry Badger, The Photobook: A History, Volume II. (London and New York: Phaidon, 2006).]

Condition

Fine in Fine dust jacket.

Description

Los cohetes duraron todo el día was realized to mark the 50th anniversary of Pemex, the nationalized Mexican oil company. It was, however, never released due to "political scuffling." Nonetheless, as Martin Parr and Gerry Badger assert, "this is a fine example of a company photobook in the journalistic mode, a mini The Family of Man in outlook, but one with more of a social viewpoint and political bite. It begins [like The Family of Man] with the birth of a baby, a new being whose life will be enriched by the oil company or, rather, by the fact that Mexico's oil deposits were nationalized for the benefit of its people. And it is ordinary people who are to the fore in this book, from the workers who are employed by the national oil company, to the Mexican masses who benefit from the much-needed foreign currency it brings. Meyer tells this simple but politically pertinent story in a bold and graphic way, in a publication that, although a company photobook, [succeeds] in its celebration of the Latin American proletariat."