Publisher's Synopsis
"In her 'casta' portraiture, Delilah Montoya documents and creates art from the ethnic roots of contemporary families living in New Mexico and Texas in this thought-provoking collection. Featuring sixteen present-day photographic group portraits, along with a DNA study for each clan, Montoya mimics and revitalizes the Spanish colonial depiction of the complex racial mixing of the people of New Spain in the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-centuries. Typically presented as a group of sixteen portraits, the 'casta' paintings illustrated the social hierarchy of the times, with the 'pure blood' Spaniards most privileged while the indigenous, African and mixed-race populations were less favored. Inspired by these paintings, Montoya captures her subjects at home among their material objects, furnishings and even pets. But instead of using eighteenth-century terminology, she represents their ethno-racial composition by juxtaposing her photos w
