Alberto Herrera Fernández Photograph Collection

Born in Puebla, Mexico in 1930, photographer Alberto Herrera Fernández (sometimes referred to in this finding aid as AHF) has a photography career equal in breath and form. He is a descendant of former Secretary of the Mexican Democratic Party, José Maria Herrera Alarcón, whose work placed the family in Mexico City until his passing in the mid 1940s.

With the loss of their main financial support, the Herrera Fernández family relocated to the mining town Cananea, Sonora, where Alberto’s mother, Carmen’s two brothers worked. Alberto, alongside his twin brother, began working at the Cananea Consolidated Copper Company for small wages and harder work. The town was built around the mine and its culture showed it. Alberto and his family had a difficult time adjusting to the small Arizona border town, with their cosmopolitan background highlighting their difference in an otherwise monotonous town. Saving up wages from the mines, Alberto and his brother saved up enough money to buy a mail-order camera and enroll in classes to learn to use it. They took photos across Cananea and were later commissioned by the managers of the mine to shoot photos for the company. There began Alberto’s photography career.

Herrera left Cananea for the Sonoran capital in 1955 and found a job at an auto dealership which he kept until his retirement 40 years later. It was in Hermosillo where Alberto developed a group of artists and creatives that influenced and developed his work. Within this group was Alberto’s eventual wife, Blanca Rosa Molina, whose own artistic vision was a guiding force to Alberto’s work throughout his career.