Valley Iconography
Brent Campney's Valley Iconography Collection assembles photographs of retail and restaurant signage from across the Lower Rio Grande Valley (LRGV) beginning in 2022. It documents the prolific use of “Mexican-themed” imagery, creating a record of advertising in the LRGV in the 2020s and providing a trove of images of sombreros, mustachioed “bandits,” and other often (but not always) cartoonish and stereotypical depictions.
Much of the scholarship on racialized advertising iconography focuses on 1) images of African Americans and 2) white-authored images that reflect the often-antagonistic beliefs and attitudes of the majority population towards minority groups. Originating in the LRGV, a region with a population today that is more than ninety-four percent Mexican American, the images in the Valley Iconography Collection differ from the emphasis of the existing academic research by focusing 1) on depictions of persons of ethnic Mexican descent and 2) on images created both by and for Mexican and Mexican American people.
Given their ubiquity in the region, the images in the Valley Iconography Collection offer researchers and students alike a unique opportunity for analysis and reflection, and for teaching and research.
