Gómez Miralles, Manuel

Costa Rican photographer (1886-1965). Considered "the great visual chronicler of Costa Rica," as well as one of the pioneers of photojournalism in the country, he began studying photography at the age of fifteen under the guidance of photographer Harrison Nathaniel Rudd Woodard, a New Yorker who resided in Costa Rica between 1873 and 1913. In 1916, he established his own photography studio next to the Variedades cinema in downtown San José, and in 1940, he moved to the La California neighborhood of the same city, where he set up a studio for the working class. He stood out for the quality of his work, as well as for portraying a "rural and simple" Costa Rica. In the history of photography in his country, he represents an icon of landscape photography. With a precise eye, he captured Costa Rica in the first half of the 20th century, leaving behind magnificent images that include landscapes, buildings, natural disasters, and a wide range of social, political, economic, and military events. His photos of the old San José, the tragedy of the Virilla River in 1926, the presidential tours, the Cartago earthquake of 1910, and even political campaigns are memorable.