A firing squad execution during the Mexican Revolution fills this real photo postcard, made by the W.H. Horne Co. of El Paso, Texas. Walter H. Horne arrived in El Paso in 1910 and began selling photographic postcards documenting the battles and turbulent scenes of the revolution unfolding just across the border. By 1916, he was paying Mexican military members for the right to photograph executions, producing some of the most arresting documentary images of the era.

A row of soldiers in wide-brimmed hats lines the right side of the frame, their rifles leveled in unison toward a single man at the far left who staggers against an adobe wall amid a visible cloud of gun smoke. Several of the shooters wear crossed bandoliers over their jackets, and a uniformed officer stands at center between the firing line and the condemned. Spectators and additional troops crowd the middle ground in front of a substantial stone building, with one figure positioned atop the wall observing from above.

In 1911, the Mexican Revolution heated up in the area of Ciudad Juarez, near El Paso, Texas, and Horne's execution postcards became widely circulated documents of revolutionary-era justice. His real photographic postcards, dated 1910 to 1920, recorded the Mexican Revolution era across New Mexico, Texas, Arizona, and Mexico and are now held in institutional collections including the DeGolyer Library at Southern Methodist University and the El Paso Public Library.

Imprinted in the lower left of the image face: "W.H. Horne Co. (Copyrighted) El Paso, Texas." Reverse is a standard undivided postcard back, unused, with no address or correspondence.