Armando Salas Portugal was a Mexican photographer born in Monterrey, Nuevo León, in 1916. A devoted lover of nature, tireless walker, and constant traveler, he explored mountain ranges, volcanoes, and deserts—capturing the vastness of the Mexican landscape through a finely tuned lens. Although originally from Monterrey, he moved to Mexico City at the age of five, where he would live for most of his life.
Despite earning a degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Salas Portugal turned to photography early on. In 1944, at just 28 years old, he held his first solo exhibition at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, invited by the poet Carlos Pellicer. This exhibition proved pivotal, marking the beginning of his lifelong dedication to photography.
His celebrated collaboration with architect Luis Barragán began that same year, when Barragán, then working on the design of El Pedregal, invited Salas Portugal to photograph the site’s raw volcanic landscape. This artistic partnership would become a lifelong exchange, culminating in the landmark 1976 MoMA exhibition on Barragán’s work in New York, accompanied by a catalog illustrated with Salas Portugal’s photographs. They continued to collaborate until Barragán’s death in 1988, and the relationship expanded Salas Portugal’s photographic vision to include architecture.
His archive is a rich visual record of modern architecture in Mexico, featuring work by key figures such as Mario Pani, Félix Candela, Pedro Ramírez Vázquez, Juan O’Gorman, Mathias Goeritz, Enrique del Moral, Augusto H. Álvarez, Teodoro González de León, David Muñoz, and Ricardo Legorreta, among many others. He also documented numerous examples of colonial Mexican architecture, creating a powerful visual dialogue between past and present.
Today, the archive and the foundation responsible for its care are overseen by his son, Armando Salas Peralta, who is leading the ongoing digitization of the entire collection, which includes over 55,000 negatives and 2,500 pages of Salas Portugal’s own writings—stories, letters, and poems.
At LIGA-ARCHIVOS, we are honored to share a small selection of this monumental body of work through two photographic series. The first features Salas Portugal’s emblematic documentation of Mario Pani’s Nonoalco-Tlatelolco housing complex, photographed in 1966. To complement this well-known project, and with the generous support of Armando Salas Peralta, we are also presenting a selection of never-before-seen photographs of buildings under construction in Mexico City.
We extend our deepest gratitude to the Armando Salas Portugal Foundation for their generous collaboration in making this project possible.
Series 01 – Nonoalco Tlatelolco
