Mexico. Plowing time in Mexico

Share

Plowing with oxen was still a daily way of working the land across much of rural Mexico in the decades this print covers, roughly 1925 to 1949, and this picture records that routine rather than any single event. The record names an ox team as its central subject, so the plow, the yoke and the animals' steady pull across the field are what the eye lands on. The gelatin silver process used here was the standard for commercial and documentary photographs of the period, and the print came to the Library of Congress as a 1952 gift from Mrs. Gordon C. Abbott. It stands as a record of hand-and-animal farming just as mechanized tractors were beginning to spread in the same years.

More from the Barns & Farms collection

Snapshots of the Past helps heritage brands, museums, historians and storytellers tell stories with history: historic prints, image licensing and historical storytelling drawn from more than 25 years of research and curation.