Museo Archivo de la Fotografía (Photography Archive Museum)

Mexico City is known for its number of museums. Many residents of the city and Mexicans in general, actually believe it to be the city with the most museums in the world. Most serious attempts at counting city museums seem to provide widely varying results, depending on membership to organizations, definitions of what counts as a museum, and city limits. However, the top three spots consistently seem to be contested between Paris, Moscow, and London, with Mexico City often appearing in the top 10. Among such museo-graphical wealth, some spaces need to offer something that makes them stand out.

The Photography Archive Museum isn’t even the city’s only museum dedicated exclusively to photography, so in order to draw in visitors, it offers heavily-themed exhibits. In early 2022 for example, pictures showcasing Mexico City markets were enhanced with piñatas, dried herbs, kitchen supplies, and many of the other items one would find for sale in these spaces.

Since its opening in 2006, in a 16th-century building known as Las Casa de las Ajaracas (House of Ajaracas, after the architectural features that define its facade), the museum has showcased several exhibitions with added features as varied as the reproduction of a dark room, a collection of bicycles, and others. In addition to the displays, as its name says, the museum houses a significant archive with more than two million pictures.