Camera Obscura » Mexico

Changing Perspectives, by Leslie Mazoch

Leslie Mazoch — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 05:44:30 +0000

Text and photos by Leslie Mazoch.

Everything changed when I realized I was giving up my dream job. I was going to give up being a photojournalist to become a photo editor.

Everything I had done up to that day was in some way a step toward becoming a photojournalist. I’d fallen in love with photography as a teenager, studied photojournalism in college, worked at my University newspaper, did a summer newspaper internship, got my first full time shooting post at a small town paper and then got my dream job: a photography post in Latin America with an international news agency. There I was, six years later, choosing to leave it.

I worried I’d have regrets, but I was positive that it was time to move to a new country, and this was the train that came my way. I packed my bags, left my agency’s cameras behind and flew from Caracas to Mexico City to take a seat at a desk. My job description changed and it felt like my ‘life description’ had changed too.

When I explained to my colleagues, and to myself, why I was doing this, I had a very positive mind set. I rationalized I’d have more time and energy to work on my own photography. In retrospect, I was right, but I had no idea of the inner struggle ahead of me.

Within the first week of my new job I came to understand why photo editors were asking me the questions they were asking when I was in the field. I see now how challenging it is to deal with dozens of countries instead of one. I now realize they were juggling communication with many photographers simultaneously on the instant chat and phone, taking other random phone calls, coordinating with other formats, spending time in meetings and writing up internal reports. Logically, a photo editor who has never been a shooter would learn from standing in the shoes of a photographer as well.

Then there’s the sheer number of photographs I look at as an editor compared to when I was a shooter. There’s no comparison, and I have to make a quick decision about them. The options are: move the image to clients as is, negotiate a crop with the photographer, don’t use it, and/or ask the photographer to send more. It’s like judging a contest on deadline day after day.

Feedback was what I most craved when I was a shooter, and if I didn’t get any, there was no relationship with my photo editor. So, making the time to explain why I like or dislike a photographer’s image, or suggest a crop for them to consider, under the time constraints of spot news, is the most valuable thing I try to do, for both of us.

As soon as I got the hang of my new work-life rhythm and settled into my new city, I started a personal photo project on my days off. After a few months of keeping my eyes and ears open, I discovered the Mexican escaramuza: female horse riding teams whose members mount side saddle and wear dresses. It was love at first site. They looked as if they came from another time.

This is where it got weird. My pictures could only be seen from my hard drives, not in the public domain, like yahoonews.com when I was a photographer for the agency. I didn’t exist online. Also, I was no longer covering events with other journalists. That family was gone. My experiences as a photographer became private. I turned inward, both photographically and psychologically. I started reading authors who explored the nature of identity to help me get my head around my new ‘life description.’

I’d always heard that no matter where you work, you should take pictures for yourself. I don’t mean save a few frames for your personal archive but in an deeper way: take pictures the way you like to take them, not only the way your company needs them. I suspect I hadn’t figured out how to do that. So, here I had an opportunity to give it a try.

When I met new people who asked me that number one question “so what do you do?,” I found myself saying “I’m a photographer who works as a photo editor.” Then I moved on to “I’m a photo editor moonlighting as a photographer.” Eventually I got comfortable saying “I’m a photo editor” and depending on the person, I told them about my personal project.

It took about a year for me to stop caring that no one else could see the pictures I was taking. It became ‘enough’ that they were for me and the people I was photographing. I became completely absorbed in the project and stopped caring how long it was taking to complete it, since I was limited to my days off. I began to accept my secret life as a photographer and simply enjoy myself.

After three years, I edited a photo package and produced an audio-slide show to send to international photojournalism competitions. To my utter amazement, they were awarded two prizes by the National Press Photographers Association’s Best of Photojournalism contest. One for a sports picture story and another for a sports audio-slide show.

Ironically, these are my first photo awards. Perhaps the combination of unlimited time to work on the project and my love for the subject matter is what came together for me to produce a solid package for the first time. I’ll keep going with the project, as I’ve fallen in love with it and the people, and I’ll post them to my website as they emerge. I have in mind a photo book and a short documentary photo-video essay.

Until this experience, I hadn’t realized that I’d so tightly bound my identity with my job title. And I’m relieved I was wrong to do so. My understanding of identity has expanded. It has matured. Leaving behind my job as ‘photographer’ doesn’t mean I leave behind my photography too, if I so choose. Our job titles don’t define us. We define ourselves.

For more informations and photos please visit Leslie Mazoch website.

In the Dark, Roberta Marroquín Doria

Roberta Marroquín Doria — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 05:55:12 +0000

Text and photos by Roberta Marroquín Doria.

During my teen years I did my first trip to Europe. I was absolutely mesmerized by the beauty all around, especially in Florence, Italy. In the years that came, I discovered my passion for art and photography throughout travelling, exploring and learning languages. Many years have passed now, and I have come to understand how big the influence of Renaissance, has been to my work.

Perhaps one of the most inspiring experiences of my life was a trip to Israel, in the late 90’s. There, after having taken a diligent look throughout my surroundings, I understood more about the human condition and the cultural differences that exist around us. The trip was eye opening for me and I realized that I needed photography as a tool for communication. It was in the year 2000, while living in Paris, where I started developing an artistic eye. Photography became for me a language that communicates something about the universe, the humans and their mysteries, the origins and the legacy of the artist itself.

One of my first photographic projects, which I started in 2001, was to capture human form in its sculpted representation, in other words, details of statues. The project was initially conceived as a play on mistaken identity, the notion of confusing the viewer by photographing marble at the hands of an old master and rendering a life-like effect. In the year that followed, an opportunity came to my way and I didn’t realized at that moment, it was about to change my life for good in ways that even today, continues to amazed me; The Circus. I was granted permission to follow the students of Centre National des Art du Cirque, in Chalons-on-Champagne, France. To what I felt for over that year I worked with these performances, the circus is energy and magic; the ring becomes a powerful place where life and death converges.

Years passed and I started working on a project about the popular art, the origins and the identity of my native country, Mexico. “Roots” it’s a series of photographs that represents a language full of nostalgia and memories of my past, which emerged as a result of my own vision of my country and my immediate reality. As a Mexican that has lived in Paris for many years, I recognized the profound respect I have toward my country and how crucial all these years in France have been for my personal and professional development.

After eight years living in Paris, I moved to New York City in the summer of 2008 to pursue a One-Year Certificate Program at the International Center of Photography. Through my photography I open a door, which leads to a world where I can create and imagine. In my search of the uncanny, I use photography as a support of the imaginary and light is my tool. My domains of predilection became spaces filled with darkness and with light I unveil a new universe where the spectator can start imagining.

In 2009 I started working in a series of photographs called “Underneath light”. I have always being fascinated by my country’s ancestral beliefs in spirits that still commingle with Christianity. In my photos, I like to play with this idea. I become the Shaman, the seer, the healer, and the magician, divining spirits and revealing what remains unseen under ordinary light. Wielding a flashlight and using a large format or a digital camera, I create my own narrative of the night. The images result in an attempt to capture a desire to enter into a world of magic, those that exist in the space between the odd and the ordinary.

By creating pockets of darkness and using a flashlight to reveal the sparsely illuminated details, I can generate ephemeral moments of profound meaning. I explore the mysterious, the sublime, the unexpected, the often obscure and unnoticed; some of those hidden meanings that lie on the edge of the consciousness.
Dreams, death, and dread are a recurring topic in my work. Some images evoke otherworldly feelings and often have a haunted effect; some others, convey a disembodied quality effect. As well there are allusions to primitive and Christian rituals that portray a ceremonial quality atmosphere.

The large format camera allows for long exposures and results in a slower and often more contemplative quality; with a light source, I pierce into the mysterious of the night and the otherworldly: With multiple exposures I can depict the same figure in different poses. Superimposing images and overexposing specific areas of the picture, I can create transparent translucent feelings and ghostly blurry effects. The flashlight allows highlighting certain areas, obscuring others and crossing out selected details. The photographs become polymorphic entities.

In Mexico, the belief in spirits is so pervasive and the paranormal become normal, and the normal does indeed become, paranormal. I find an uncanny beauty in this everyday dual existence, where the gloom visually heals the rifts between the two parallel worlds of dark and light and makes them whole.

After having completed the “Underneath Light” series, this new body of work “Dans le Noir” (In the Dark) is more complex and strident. The photographs derive from a similar worldview, the two disparate cultures that coexist in my native Mexico: modern Christianity and the still-pervasive ancient Indian beliefs. The images reflect dreams, wishes and wants – panoply of memories, emotions and intents; they become more profound that what they appear to be and transmit an eerie poetic effect.

These black and white, and color photographs are taken in different locations: the wild of Yucatan, the cold night of Central Park, and in private homes. The darkness becomes as important as the subject matter and leaves the viewer wondering what lies unrevealed. The seemingly normal scenarios and characters undergo an eerie metamorphosis during the process of shooting in the dark.

Modern Christianity, as practiced in my country, with its punitive view of man, becomes a frightening theme. Macabre Aztec and Mayan beliefs that lie in the collective memory of Mexico suddenly emerge. The Christian and ancient Indian beliefs intertwine. Also intertwined is a view of nature as predatory. In addition, intertwined are allusions to ancient Greek and Roman myths and children’s stories.

In my culture, I have experienced, a bombarding of images about suffering, fear, loneliness, despair, struggle, and moral duality. This sophisticated images arises some important issues about the existence of good and evil in the world and where the real and the unreal coexist in Mexican culture.

This project represents a further venture into the realm of Magical Realism, where fantastic elements blend with the ordinary to show a deeper understanding of the world. Much like the well-known expressionist painting of Edvard Munch, “The Scream,” this body of work expresses an existential angst. These provocative photographs become my own primal outcry about the tragedy of the human condition.

Please visit Roberta Marroquín Doria for more informations and photographs.

“Zapatistas”, heroes from the last century, by Jon Guido Bertelli

Jon Bertelli — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 05:08:41 +0000

Don Galo
© Jon Bertelli
Please visit “Zapatistas”, heroes from the last century, by Jon Guido Bertelli for the full size image.

Text and photographs by Jon Bertelli.

Farewell my life, by Don Galo

I shall speak to the world and its people,
through poetry and poems;
although some cause great joy and happiness;
others cause pain, sorrow and sadness,
others cause displeasure, anger and rage.

It doesn’t matter! Such is time and life,
intricate with sadness and happiness,
anger and rage.

Farewell my life, my loyal partner;
I was a strong man, alluring and brave;
you gave me all you could offer,
thank you my life.

Day by day I’m drifting away from you;
seeking for a new joyful and eternal life,
of peace and happiness.

Farewell comrades of war,
my friends,
to you I bid this final goodbye,
farewell.

Original spanish version at the end of the article¹

Mateo Zapata, son of Emiliano Zapata
© Jon Bertelli
Please visit “Zapatistas”, heroes from the last century, by Jon Guido Bertelli for the full size image.

In the State of Morelos, during the Agrarian Revolution of the South, 1910-1920, Emiliano Zapata and his courageous fighters (men and women) battled fearlessly for the rights of their people against injustice, under the common cry of “Tierra y Libertad” (“Land and Freedom”).

I spent the greater part of the two years that I lived in Mexico, during the mid-late 1990s, in search of the last surviving Zapatista veterans from those distant years.

My search was focused in the state of Morelos, where the Revolution of the South started; Pancho Villa was the leader of the Revolution of the North.

While the “kid” of those photographed and interviewed was 99 years of age, most of the other veterans had surpassed the magic age of 100, survivors from the last century. Three of the veterans passed away a few days after I met them.

Zapata's grandson
© Jon Bertelli
Please visit “Zapatistas”, heroes from the last century, by Jon Guido Bertelli for the full size image.

They were people who left their belongings behind to follow the heroic figurehead Emiliano Zapata. Finding refuge in the surrounding hills for up to 10 years and fighting guerilla warfare, dedicated to bettering the plight of the common man.

Their hardened character for survival was forged through years of battles, bloodshed and hardships.

Not only did they give up their own lives for their ideals, they even sent their own children to continue the fight.

Always friendly, they would welcome me into their homes, where they told me about their experiences and life during the revolution.
They talked with such passion about a past so close to their hearts, as if it were a part of their present. When I learned more about these intrepid people made frail and minute with the passing of the years, they reached dimensions of giants in my mind.

Most of the veterans whom I met, had been awarded for their bravery during the revolution with the medals of Merito Periodo Revolucionario and a few also with that of Legion de Honor.

Teniente de Caballeria Don Galo Pacheco Valle

Teniente de Caballeria Don Galo Pacheco Valle
© Jon Bertelli
Please visit “Zapatistas”, heroes from the last century, by Jon Guido Bertelli for the full size image.

(Cavalry Lieutenant) Teniente de Caballeria Don Galo Pacheco Valle, joined the revolutionary forces of Emiliano Zapata in 1913, with his two older brothers and his trusted Mauser rifle. A survivor of many battles, he told me that the incoming bullets sounded to him like a swarm of bees and with a smile added that one of them bit off the lobe of his left ear. After the revolution he became a homeopathic doctor, a poet and the principal of a school in his small town of Cocoyoc. Even with the many years weighing on him, he was clear minded and still happily working as a homeopathic doctor when I met him. Not only a recipient of the Merito Periodo Revolucionario and Legion de Honor, but had also been honored by the state of California, U.S.A. He passed away in 2002; well into his 100s.

Don Vidal Paredes

Don Vidal Paredes
© Jon Bertelli
Please visit “Zapatistas”, heroes from the last century, by Jon Guido Bertelli for the full size image.

Don Vidal Paredes, born in 1898 and passed away at the age of 100. His weapon of choice during the revolution was the favorite of many Zapatistas, the classic Winchester 30-30, because of its quick lever-action firing power. I visited him on several occasions and always found him waiting for me under a portrait of Emiliano Zapata, with his Winchester in hand and a medal proudly pinned to his chest. His usually jovial eyes would become stern and fixed when telling me about the suffering of those far gone days, transporting me back in time with him. My good friend Don Vidal, passed away just a few weeks after his 100th birthday.

Dimas Leyva

Dimas Leyva
© Jon Bertelli
Please visit “Zapatistas”, heroes from the last century, by Jon Guido Bertelli for the full size image.

Dimas Leyva, born in 1892, loved life and singing corridos (Mexican popular narrative songs). A witness to the killing of Emiliano Zapata at the Hacienda of Chinameca, Morelos where his body was riddled by the many bullets fired by the soldiers waiting in an ambush.

When I first met Dimas, I found him sitting by the edge of his bed as he emerged in the darkness of the room, with only a faint light peeking through the slightly opened window. As soon as I told him that I wanted to photograph him, he quickly picked up an old print of his general, Emiliano Zapata, wishing to be photographed with him.
Being with his beloved general once again, filled him with such pride that the light in the room, appeared to concentrate on the two of them, like the spotlight on a stage.

Dimas passed away only a couple of days after I photographed him.

Cavalry General Pantaleón

Cavalry General Pantaleón
© Jon Bertelli
Please visit “Zapatistas”, heroes from the last century, by Jon Guido Bertelli for the full size image.

When I was first introduced to Cavalry General Pantaleón, I was welcomed by his thunderous voice and personality. I noticed his long bushy eyebrows; each turned the opposite direction of the other, as it having a life on their own. He was known in town for his past as a Zapatista fighter, for his lively personality, his enjoyment to work on his small parcel of land and his afternoon visits to the local “Cantina” for some Tequila.

He invited me to take a seat in his small living room, where he told me about his ideals and the battles in which he participated in. As he told me, while the many photographs and busts of Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa, pieces of his revolutionary memorabilia adorning the walls, appeared to be looking down at us with consent.

Suddenly he stood up, lifted his shirt to show me a large scar running across his belly and with his characteristic laugh told me that nobody believed him, that at his age, he would have survived the recent operation of removing a bullet that had been lodged in his body since the revolution. With a firm tone he said: “Mira, … nadie me creyó, pero aqui estoy mas vivo que nunca!” – “Si señor!” (“Look, … nobody would believe me, but here I am more alive than ever!” – “Yes Sir!)

José Manuel Gabino Corona

José Manuel Gabino Corona
© Jon Bertelli
Please visit “Zapatistas”, heroes from the last century, by Jon Guido Bertelli for the full size image.

José Manuel Gabino Corona, a quiet and noble man with the rank of a captain in Zapata’s infantry. Although happy to have survived the revolution, he was sad about his many young companions who had died at a young age during those dreadful years of the war.

Marcelino Anrobio Montes

Marcelino Anrobio Montes
© Jon Bertelli
Please visit “Zapatistas”, heroes from the last century, by Jon Guido Bertelli for the full size image.

Marcelino Anrobio Montes, born in 1896. Marcelino fought and rode with Emiliano Zapata from the time he was just a young teenager in 1911, until the year when E. Zapata was killed in 1919. He had a severe and piercing stare that would only relax when his wife, a niece of E. Zapata was close to him, often with her arm on his shoulders or wrapped around him. Barely visible, their dog would follow them everywhere at a distance, guarding and keeping a watchful eye on them, aware of their fragility.

Benjamin Sanchez Medina

Benjamin Sanchez Medina
© Jon Bertelli
Please visit “Zapatistas”, heroes from the last century, by Jon Guido Bertelli for the full size image.

Benjamin Sanchez Medina and his wife invited me into their home, located in the small town of Chinameca, only a few blocks from where Emiliano Zapata, betrayed by Colonel Jesús Guajardo on April 10th – 1910, was shot and fell lifeless from his majestic horse “As de oro” (“Golden Ace”). Benjamin said with a sparkle in his one good eye (he had lost sight in one), “El caballo de Zapata no era cualquier caballo!” (“Zapata’s horse was not like any other horse!”) Benjamin and his wife still looked like the perfect young couple in love.

Their many happy grandchildren surrounded us while their friends peeked through the window, wondering about all the attention surrounding the old and proud warrior.

Señora Angela Zamora

Señora Angela Zamora
© Jon Bertelli
Please visit “Zapatistas”, heroes from the last century, by Jon Guido Bertelli for the full size image.

How can I ever forget the sweet and determined girl who followed Emiliano Zapata and his troops? She joined the Zapatistas at a young age, at first carrying provisions, helping with cooking, rolling cigars for Emiliano Zapata, loading the rifles and later actively participating in the fighting. She was one of the many women who fought courageously in bringing a positive outcome to the armed struggle that they were part of.

At first she did not want to have her photograph taken, believing the photograph would rob her of her soul. Fortunately I had brought a Polaroid camera with me, I told her that I would take her photograph and give her soul back. As soon as I handed her the instant photograph and after taking a good look at it her face lit up with a big smile, she promptly positioned herself toward the warm sunlight and consented to let me photograph her.

* * *

Medals
© Jon Bertelli
Please visit “Zapatistas”, heroes from the last century, by Jon Guido Bertelli for the full size image.

More than ten years have passed since I last saw my “Old friends”, they have left us to join their companions in arms and their “El Jefe” (“The Boss”, as he was also known) Emliano Zapata. I miss their quick wits and their positive outlook on life enjoying every minute of it, their strength and their noble ideals, which still echo through the hills of Morelos and across Mexico

I’m grateful to Zapata’s family members and the families of the Zapatistas who spent countless days with me looking for the veterans, without them this project would not have been possible.

Winchester 30-30
© Jon Bertelli
Please visit “Zapatistas”, heroes from the last century, by Jon Guido Bertelli for the full size image.

A special thank you to all my friends in the state of Morelos, they made my two years in beautiful Mexico a much more personal and special chapter in my life.

Please visit Jon Bertelli website for more informations and photos.

Adios vida mia

Hablaré al mundo y a la gente,
por medio de poesías y poemas;
aunque algunas causan gran gozo y alegría;
otras causan pena, dolor y tristeza,
otras causan molestias, furores y rabias.

¡No importa! Así es el tiempo y la vida,
compleja de tristezas y alegrías,
furores y rabias.

Adiós vida mía, mi fiel compañera;
fui hombre fuerte, magnético y valiente;
tú me diste de todo lo que tienes,
gracias vida mía.

Me voy alejando [de] ti, día tras día;
voy buscando una nueva vida feliz y eterna,
de paz y alegría.

Adiós compañeros de Guerra,
amigos y amigas,
de vos me despido para siempre,
adiós.

Hidden, by Federico Gama

Federico Gama — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 12:13:24 +0000

Text¹ and photos by Federico Gama.

Between November and December 2004 I found myself compelled to start a new project. What I was seeing right outside my window was something truly extraordinary, and it suggested a substantive continuation of themes I’d been exploring in the previous fifteen years: cultural migrations, identity, and dress as a form of expression.

Every Sunday I’d see them pass by, in twos, or singly, or in groups: curious urban-style Mexico City kids who beat an almost ritualistic path. They’d go from the Chapultepec metro station to an area near Tacubaya station, and they walked down the very street where I live, as if to shout “Here I am and you can’t escape me.” It was evident that the players in this pageant—a story I’d wanted to tell for some years—were enthralled by urban fashion.

Right at noon on Sunday 13 March 2005 I began my wanderings near the Tacubaya metro station, just as I’d been doing for several months previously. I habitually began at Tacubaya station, would continue outside Pino Suárez metro station and end the afternoon at a downtown park, the Alameda Central, guided by whatever I’d find in the streets related to a project I named Mazahuacholoskatopunk, in which I sought to portray indigenous young people in youthful fashions and styles derived from so-called “urban tribes.”

That Sunday, with my camera and a 70-300 mm zoom, I surreptitiously followed the young people milling about among the carnival rides that stretch from Metro Tacubaya to the Cartagena Market. I sat for a while on a stairway that divides the park until I saw a group of three punks, so I ran to the opposite side of where they were headed. I knew they were on their way to nearby lunch counters, to have a beer, and that I could get good front-on shots of them when they came back or made their way around nearby alleys. Ultimately I perched myself on a garden wall where I could keep an eye on two walkways or alleys and achieve a good vantage point on both streets, that afforded an interesting composition involving some shuttered storefronts.

On Sundays, the alleys around Metro Tacubaya tend to be rather abandoned compared to their weekday bustle. I waited for twenty disappointing minutes and grew a bit disappointed since I thought the punks weren’t going to come back. But then I saw them walking in my direction—a group of maybe ten or fifteen. My wait had paid off.

It was exciting to see these young people walking defiantly, masters of their environment and its scene, and though I took care not to be noticed, I knew that not much time would pass before they’d see me there; as well I thought that I’d only have the chance to get four shots, at most, before they’d see I was taking photos. I wanted to avoid being noticed for a number of reasons: the subjects’ attitudes would change, they’d stop allowing me to take pictures and furthermore, I’d lose this extraordinary set-up.

It was the largest group I’d seen with the characteristics that had interested me—and in within the context of one of the city’s roughest neighbourhoods.

I took the first shot when I had them in the viewfinder; I framed the shot around the group to include the greatest number, focusing on the central personalities to reduce focus on the foreground or background, because of their imposing manner of moving forward together—flexibly and defiantly, like a school of fish. I wanted that idea of confidence and defiance to come through precisely in my photographs. Then I hit upon another possibility, and in a split second I opened up the frame to contextualize where they were walking and I started shooting again. The first personalities had already passed my visual field and I focused on those I had in the foreground but in the back of the image I included the sign at the lunch place, called Escondido (Spanish for “hidden”), where they’d eaten and had their beers. I also included another figure, a bearded man that’s seen off in the distance to the right and who has nothing to do with the group. I wanted to include him as a confrontation or contrast to the young men, since the context where they hang out on Sundays doesn’t belong to them; from Monday to Saturday, it’s a place where different groups come together and it functions on a different level. I thought in this composition I could play with the ambiguity of the figures in the space, with a textual reference affirming that someone is hidden, as well as the image of that other figure that can barely be seen to the right—a figure that some have told me resembles an image of Christ. To be honest, I didn’t imagine anything like that at that moment, but with every passing I day I grow more convinced that that’s how the figure’s image works. Lastly I took one more shot of one last guy who was approaching the lunch place’s door—where the other guys had chosen to have a beer and where he, arms crossed, stood watching as the rest of his friends entered the restaurant.

In a few seconds what I’d feared would happen, did; they discovered me. But I’d already gotten three great shots of the group, along with that sensation all photographers get when they work on film and have to go to the lab to see the results: a strong hunch I’d captured something really great, and at the same time, a terrible fear the shots would somehow not turn out.

The adventure didn’t end there. They told me right away they didn’t want their pictures taken. It wasn’t hard to figure out who was the leader, so I went up to him to see if I could talk him in to letting me take a group photo, but he utterly refused and indicated that none of them allowed his photo to be taken. Posed pictures, in fact, did not interest me; I just wanted to start a conversation to ease tensions a little and try to explain to them why I was after the images. The situation was tricky—maybe dangerous—for a lone photographer in an abandoned alleyway, on Sunday, and in a part of town where the police practically don’t exist. But based on experience with these youth groups, I knew that everything was under control. They maintained they didn’t like photos and that one time someone had been taken pictures of them at the Merced Market, had failed to deliver them, and had then sought to sell them to the boys at a very high price. I explained I was interested in the current fashions of young people who had emigrated from small towns to Mexico City, to take jobs in construction, for a photo-documentary project. The notion seemed so odd to them that it only fed their insecurity. They objected in clumsy, slum-style Spanish: No se hace. No bandas. No foto. No se hace bandas. No foto—Not happening; no way, man. No photos. Don’t even go there; no pictures.

I didn’t insist. I left straight away, because at that time I worked as an editor at a newspaper and I had to get to an editorial meeting. But before that I swung by the lab to have my film developed. I went to the meeting only so it would end sooner and I could go pick up my negatives.

When I saw the images I realized I’d created a photograph that defined my project. The scene seemed like something out of a movie, a contextualized portrait where the most important figure was surrounded by his tribe, who lent him an air of strength and power.

I called the image Escondido (Hidden) and the story of how this photo came to be exemplifies many of the questions that make up the Mazahuacholoskatopunk project. As Bruno Munari points out, “everyone sees what he knows,” but what’s most interesting about this phenomenon is the centrality of appearances, and the way they can confuse us, especially if we consider the dual meaning of the term appearances. In one sense appearance is the superficial aspect of things, in this case the fact that the young men—in their own estimation—maintain, or make efforts to maintain, a proper image (or appearance). The second sense refers back to appearance in the sense of a put on—that is, appearing to be something you’re not. These kids dress like LA-style cholos, skateboarders, punks, emos or goths, but aren’t of these. They employ these Sunday disguises, outfits or even vestments to adopt other personalities in a representative sense but also as an individual characteristic and in the guise of a self-satisfied and interesting individual.

Put another way, these young people mix up appearances, the staging of scenes and performance so as to “hide” their origins, since in Mexico there’s nothing lower or more pejorative on the social ladder than to be an “Indian,” with all it presumably implies: uneducated, poor and poorly dressed. At first glance, to less expert eyes, these young people are “punks.” Specifically, a Mazahuacholoskatopunk kid’s intention—consciously or otherwise—is to look like a teenager from Mexico City and therefore avoid discrimination. They adopt these looks to integrate or “convert to” Mexico City’s urban life, in radical and immediate ways. They seek to make their working-class, indigenous origins invisible, and youth culture clothing offers them the perfect camouflage to “act out” (in the sense of interpreting a role) a street scene, by adopting looks as far as possible as those of traditional indigenous peoples.

The outfits lend these young people a magical sense of security, like that of soldiers, or priests or supermodels, and that is indeed the way the clothes are worn—to evince glamour (i.e., security, strength, power, elegance and sophistication). The Mazahuacholoskatopunks are groups of young people assembled from numerous and varied indigenous groups, native to central Mexico, where differing languages are spoken, but who manage to identify themselves through a series of “personalized” outfits that unify them amid their great variety, and that afford them style. In the case of the Mazahuacholoskatopunks, it’s clear that dandyism isn’t just Savile Row anymore. The only thing that’s the same for everyone is their social position: originally from indigenous towns in Mexico, which means they live in a state of marginalization and are compelled to leave their hometowns to seek work in the city as construction workers (in the case of the men) or servants (in the case of the women). Normally, they are people who exist without social visibility.

In this transformation, or construction, of urban identity, the Mazahuacholoskatopunk recovers a certain dignity in the public forum and his body language changes. Members of the group act or move about the city confidently, like conquistadors or runway models (though interestingly, this applies almost exclusively to Sundays, since they work all day the rest of the week). But once they are observed—once they know that the Other, the “real” urban other, observes them—it is as if their urban disguises are stripped away, and with them the power that such outfits represent to the Mazahuacholoskatopunk. At that point, the dandy withers and the timid, distrustful, and fearful “Indian” emerges.

When I discovered this vulnerability behind their provocative appearance, I hit upon how to produce my project at the same time I imagined a medium for its presentation. It offered increased visibility to the Mazahuacholoskatopunk group by leveraging the “urban dignity” they constructed for themselves, in the urban context. And it would propose a very different kind of visibility/dignity, deliberately in contrast to the sort of paternalistic, top-down prescriptions an anthropologist, politician or priest—in short, that institutions—would imagine for them.

Significantly, Bulmaro Ventura, a Mazatec Indian from Oaxaca and speaker at the “First Forum on the Urban Indian,” organized in 2009 by Mexico’s National School of Urban Anthropology and History, has commented that “Anthropologists say when the indigenous leave their communities, the indigenous dies. But it’s not true—look at us; here we are.”

Based on that remark, I reaffirmed what I’d been doing since 2004: “equating” the attitude projected by the city’s Mazahucholoskatopunks—in both practical and symbolic terms—with that of supermodels who captivate us from magazine covers and on television commercials. But to do so, I needed to document them employing the same aesthetic values as are used to portray cinema stars (which in technical terms meant working with telephoto lenses, as is the case in fashion shows). Then I needed to publicize their images via urban advertising media channels, specifically by exhibiting their portraits on Mexico City’s large-format, out-of-home advertising venues, and specifically on the walls erected in front of the city’s new construction sites. Thus, the macuarro (a name applied to novice or unskilled construction workers) is able to confront his “urban alter ego,” the Mazahuacholoskatopunk, who moves about the city’s plazas, confident and victorious, on Sundays. The project would also allow me to photograph reactions and relationships that the confrontation would provoke, which would also contribute, in its way, to the Mazahuacholoskatopunks’ visibility.

Digressing somewhat, I should make clear that this project has the good fortune to have been shown at more than twenty exhibitions, both in and out of Mexico, at galleries and museums, and has been featured in no fewer than ten university discussion forums and conferences. Nevertheless, in all that time it has never been possible to present it as originally planned, in large-scale outdoor advertising formats, largely due to cost restraints. The closest approximation was its use as the promotional poster for Fotoseptiembre 2005, a photography festival organized in Mexico City, which allowed Mazahuacholoskatopunk to be exhibited at 50 citywide bus stops.

In any form, the project would have been inconceivable if I hadn’t become paparazzi to the Mazahuacholoskatopunks, or put another way, if I hadn’t given these young people the attention and importance they deserve—the deserved privilege of being portrayed as superstars. It is my motivation behind using telephoto lenses, since with these I was able to recreate the “unapproachable” aesthetic/aura that models and movie stars often have. All the shots from the series I call Top Models Mazahuacholoskatopunk were taken in that way. Every Sunday for more than three years, I’d stake out areas where I was unlikely to be noticed and shoot the Mazahuacholoskatopunks remotely, to avoid their feeling exposed, because what interested me most was documenting the body language they’d incorporated into their day off—this dignity among indigenous kids within Mexico City, in the very place where it had been denied them for generations.

It was, for me, an extraordinary opportunity to document a social group’s body language without the camera’s gaze interfering with or modifying its object (remember that the camera’s presence changes everything, and in this case would go beyond modifying just the action—like when one works close up and subjects feel like they have to groom themselves for the camera, if not change even more). Approaching the Mazahuacholoskatopunks with a wide-angle lens would have caused them to feel exposed—uncovered, naked—and their underlying timidity would have been revealed, rendering them newly “vulnerable.”

There is a strange contradiction in the Mazahuacholoskatopunks’ peculiar fashions. The pleasure and enjoyment these young people take in their outfits is quite notable, and as well, there is an entire system of accessorizing—one both time-consuming and highly formal—which tends to exaggeration and the baroque, exalting a certain dandyism and glamour. Still, it’s clear these young people don’t array themselves in order to be “discovered” by movie cameras. Rather, they do it to be anonymous, to be just one more city kid. Put another way, they seek not to attract attention, and this has become one of their effective successes, since urban dwellers see them not as Indians, but as kids from so-called “urban tribes.” Ironically the tribes are themselves discriminated against in certain environments, and this oppression has been converted by established groups into something of a unifying element.

Nevertheless, the Mazahuacholoskatopunks’ fashion statements have more to do with metrosexuals than ideologues. They don’t go beyond belonging, of being part of a group of indigenous young people—sometimes fat, sometimes rebellious, sometimes clueless—who go to hang out and dance with their peers on Sunday. The fact they dress as cholos, skateboarders, punks, emos or goths make them formally equivalent to other city kids, but it doesn’t make them equal; they neither understand nor are interested in ideology, music, turf, nor the customs of the groups whose dress they imitate. Additionally, by not really belonging to these other groups, nor sharing their concerns, they are able to combine two or three youth subcultures’ fashions into their own outfits, but—and this is quite interesting—they unfailingly do so in combination with elements from their cultures of origin, i.e., with indigenous elements that become a sort of code for identifying one another.

If these young people saw a “true” urban punk they would experience a certain fascination for the outfit, but the two subjects would not identify with one another, because “true” punks wouldn’t display elements taken from indigenous cultures—it would strike the latter as strange and in any case they couldn’t converse, because they’d also be unable to understand the Mazahuacholoskatopunks’ language or slang.

Mazahuacholoskatopunk is a project I have sought to carry out since 1996. Back then, obviously, my subjects didn’t evince the same habits they do today with regard to representation and self-presentation, nor did I know where all this would lead; I was merely interested in them as a group that had no visible social dignity.

Yet my knowledge of, or approach to, this group of young, rural Indian immigrants to the city dates back even further, to when I was a boy and I began to notice how city kids in gangs from my Tacubaya neighborhood disdained indigenous people, simply because we had been born in Mexico City and they hadn’t. I named this project and its young subjects Mazahuacholoskatopunk because they come from diverse regions and cultures. There are Zapotecs, Mixtecs, Otomís, Ñañus, and Nahuas, to name only a few ethnicities. The neighborhood where I lived as a boy, however, was an obligatory entry point for the Mazahua people. Buses that serve the mountainous regions to the west of Mexico City, and reach such communities as Toluca, Zitácuaro, Atlacomulco, El Oro, and Lerma—that is, Mazahua and Otomí lands—park on the street where I currently live, also a part of the Tacubaya neighborhood. As such, I chose the Mazahua to symbolize the indigenous element of this intricate cultural mix. They are the group I know best, and the fact that one of the project’s most important images comes from Tacubaya makes it both autobiographical and auto-critical. To the degree that these young people accentuate and exaggerate their dress, so as well do they strip us naked as a society that discriminates and displaces indigenous people to the margins. That in turn makes their social visibility and dignity—something they themselves have constructed—all the more important.

Translated in english by Michael Parker-Stainback.

In suburbia Mexicana, by Alejandro Cartagena

Alejandro Cartagena — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 18:29:39 +0000

Text and photos by Alejandro Cartagena.

In Suburbia Mexicana, Alejandro Cartagena seeks a new way in which the subject of urban growth can be addressed and photographically represented. Mimicking the method of physiological free association, he pursues to find causes and effects of the new suburban sprawl in the Metropolitan area of Monterrey in northeastern Mexico. At first glance, his ideas seem to look for no immediate voluntary intellectual reasoning, moving freely from one aspect to another in order to encompass a body of work that allows him to explore new boundaries of his initial conjecture. If we think of our urban landscapes as a reflection of society and as Robert Park has written that “the city is man’s most successful attempt to remake the world he lives in more after his heart’s desire” then we can assert that with Cartagena’s engagement in this project with such diverse and unrestricting forms, he has succeeded in moving closer to our contemporary ways of pursuing information and revealing an unconscious fact about how the modern urban process works.

In the first part of the project, Topographies of a fragmented city, Cartagena sets out to do document the new suburbs. In the past 6 years more than 300,000 houses have been built in the 9 cities that conform the Metropolitan area of Monterrey. Almost a copy of the suburban sprawl of post war USA, the new party in government (PAN) has made its project of housing every possible family, one of its main economical programs to revive Mexico’s economy. As other photographers who have addressed issues of urban growth, he is also fascinated and bewildered by the man-altered landscape. The search to use these sites as metaphor of societies need for land ownership and economical prosperity is represented in many of his juxtapositions of the natural and man made structures.

In the second part, Alejandro draws our attention to a much-photographed theme in photography: the abandoned site. But it is in the context of this project that these images gain strength, as they are not sheer observations of an already striking place; these urban holes are a direct cause and consequence of suburbia. Land speculation in Monterrey’s downtown has many of these patches of land in complete desertion, as owners wait for a possible revival of the old city center in order to gain bigger profits in case of a sale. In the mean time, developers are scared off on to the periphery because of the high cost of this speculative land and the laxer constructions standards found in the newer developing areas.

In the third section, Lost Rivers, the author looks into an environmental issue that stems from the excess of housing sprawl. These desiccating bodies of water around and inside the MAM are photographed as something beautifully tragic; a quasi-romantic representation of the negative counterpart of our fashionable urban well-being. In the last 2 decades many of these rivers and streams have been rerouted to damns to supply water for the 9 cities of the MAM or have dried out as suburbia moves closer, destroying vegetation that sheltered and preserved the riverbeds running water. In the end we can also perceive how these photographs have conceptually answered some of the questions posed by the images of the “New Topographers” of the 60´s and 70´s.

In the fourth part titled “The other distance”, Cartagena looks at San Pedro Garza Garcia, one of the richest municipalities in Latin America and part of the MAM. Here Cartagena is bringing forward the connection between the wealthy and new middle and low class urbanization models and their direct relationship in a neoliberal capitalist state economic structure. This economic contrast as we can see has influenced a segmentation of social life styles, pushing further and further away those who are not able to buy “good” land or build houses near the better-urbanized city. When one compares, the contrast Cartagena points out, is a perverse reality of how both spaces are conformed; one is almost completely deprived of social cohesion space like parks and public plazas, and nor are they fit for well designed transport infrastructure, hospitals or education centres, while the other model lives and expects, as their right to the city, to have these spaces and services available to them. Ironically, both communities are completely entwined and dependent on each other; for the economically wealthy depend on the unending process of urbanization and the labor of the people living in these far away “cities” to keep their capital growing and the laborer class depend on them to acquire these new houses and make a living. In the last part of the project we observe the inhabitants of theses new suburbs and there recently acquired homes. Cartagena has returned to the housing developments he pictured 2- 3 years ago to show us how these sites have become humanized and recording some of the vicissitudes that these new home owners have faced.

Finally we can conclude that in Suburbia Mexicana Alejandro Cartagena is engaging in ideas of changing the ways we approach a photographic subject, ways of producing information and the fact of the excessive urban sprawl triggered since early 2001 in all of Mexico. The possibilities explored by Cartagena can strike us as odd at times but we should embrace the opportunity to explore these parallel narratives presented to us in a documentary style. Even if we are sent off confused and puzzled, the fact remains that economic strategies stretch out to influence all o us, sometimes in a positive manner other times in a negative way, but we are not independent of it. Our current financial crisis is our nearest reference of this and it is not to be taken lightly that it has much to do with the strong human need of homeownership. Alejandro seems not to condemn but to point out and open relationships between issues that, as disparate as they are, sometimes are not seen as a whole in the capitalist state. He also points out how society resides in the dilemma of living as capitalists but wishing for a more fair (socialist?) World.

Estamos Buscando A – We’re Looking For, by Paul Turounet

Paul Turounet — Sun, 31 May 2009 07:30:35 +0000

Paul Turounet long term project “Estamos Buscando A – We’re Looking For” explores the cultural and emotional concerns of Mexican emigrants that are trying to cross the United States border. It is a really engaged and personal body of work, as Paul Turounet says: “like the migrants, I too, have been on a personal journey to a place where I’ll be in a place I can call home“.

In this article Paul Torounet show us a page from his journal that describe his experience in the middle of the desert, a long mail from a U.S. Border Patrol Agent and a description of his photographic installation Más allá – the Retablos of Migrants along the U.S. – Mexico Border

Following text and photos by Paul Turounet.

Estamos Buscando A – We’re Looking For

“Pobre Mexico! Tan lejos de Dios y tan cerca de los Estados Unidos.”
“Poor Mexico! So far from God and so close to the United States.”

Mexican President Porfirio Diaz (1877 – 1910)

Since 1992, the U.S. Border Patrol has apprehended nearly 1.5 million undocumented persons attempting to enter the southern border from Mexico each year. During this time, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has dramatically increased its law enforcement presence along the nearly 2,000 mile border. It’s hard to imagine anyone could make it past such a formidable barrier. Yet, Mexican and Central American migrants endure the journey and miraculously make it across despite the risks and dangers.

So why would so many men, women and children attempt to risk and sacrifice so much to come to the United States? To unite with family already there? Economic desperation and necessity? A restless spirit and the need to find emotional harmony? There is no universal reason other than the need to go from one place to another both literally and metaphorically; a need universal to existence and the human experience.

Retablo Nº2 – Martin from Sinaloa, Alejandro from Nayarit and Jose from Chihuahua, Tijuana, Baja California Norte, 2003
© Paul Turounet

With the support of a Fulbright Fellowship and grants from the Trans-Border Institute, I’ve been photographing the social and cultural conditions of the Mexican experience on the U.S. – Mexico Border while living on both sides of the border. I’ve been drawn to the border light, which has served as a beacon of hope for those desiring to go North. And like the migrants, I too, have been on a personal journey to a place where I’ll be in a place I can call “home;” a place where I’ll be resolved with my own sense of identity, purpose and values as well as provide others the opportunity to contemplate our collective spiritual needs to get to that place we all desire.

Regardless of the demarcation lines of country and culture, we are all migrants in search of something profound and meaningful to our being. The bright border light forces a pause in this transitory experience for the migrant. At that very moment, their faces intimately reveal an unsettling and knowing sense that something is being lost and sacrificed in anticipation of something gained once nightfall finally arrives.

June 24, 2004 – Traveling with Grupos Beta (Mexican Border Patrol)

It takes about an hour to drive south from Tucson to Sasabe. I’ve been staying in Tucson, as there’s only one hotel in Sasabe and it’s usually filled with migrants. It would be too dangerous to stay there anyway. Sasabe feels like the wild west only the guns aren’t visible.

Crossing the border, it takes a while to convince the Mexican Customs agent why I’m going to Sasabe. He’s right, there’s nothing there, “Just a bunch of Mexicans looking to escape.” After he goes through my gear, I make some pictures of the agent and put the Polaroid negatives in my jar of sodium thiosulfate. He was really curious about what the soup jar full of liquid was for.

For the past few days, I’ve been traveling with Grupos Beta, the Mexican Border Patrol for the Protection of Migrants. They don’t have any law enforcement jurisdiction and are not allowed to carry firearms – even though many of the human and drug smugglers are packing a full arsenal of weapons. There are four agents stationed at the Grupos Beta office in Sasabe and they can only travel along the border to advise migrants of the dangers of crossing and register minors who are attempting to cross.

Retablo Nº16 – La Ladrillera – “The Brickyard” – Human Smuggling Loading Area, Sasabe, Sonora, Mexico, 2004
© Paul Turounet

Since the motorcycle kept getting stuck in the sand, and I was slowing them down on their quad-runners, it’s decided we’ll travel by truck to Rancho La Sierrita, which is about 20 miles west of Sasabe. Before heading out, we stop at the Super Coyote Market to get some water and mix it with orange-flavored powder for a cheap version of orange juice.

Just south of town, we drive through La Ladrillera – “The Brickyard” – an old brick-making area that has been converted into a one-stop migrant transit center where nearly all the migrants come from Altar to make travel plans to cross the border. In the afternoon, once trucks are loaded full with migrants, they travel out it into the desert – both east and west – to drop migrants at isolated crossing points. Parked is a brand new, red Ford Lobo (F-150), which makes Felipe and Jaime, the Grupos Beta agents, nervous. “We don’t stop when the truck is here. Too dangerous.”

Along the way to Rancho La Sierrita, we stop at Arroyo de Coyote. It is the middle of the day and already hot. There’s no breeze – just the buzzing of flies everywhere. Everything is still in the desert. There are two large arroyos that have been created over time from the monsoon rains that take place every summer. Both are filled with clothes and other personal effects – pants, shirts, backpacks, underwear. Arroyo de Coyote is where migrants are robbed and the women are sexually assaulted.

Rancho La Sierrita is in the middle of nowhere, about a mile south of the border. It’s a place where migrants come to wait – wait to meet up with a coyote, wait for nightfall, wait to be smuggled across the barbed wire fence, wait for the unknown. There’s nothing here except a couple of little shacks where migrants can pick up supplies before making their journey north at nightfall.

We stop at Puerto San Miguel, another small migrant camp, and pick up nine women and three children who had been abandoned by their coyote the night before. One of the women is six-months pregnant. They want to go back to La Ladrillera so they can find another coyote to take them across. As we travel east back to Sasabe, it seems we’re passing trucks with full loads heading west every fifteen minutes. How can so many people be crossing every day?

As we approach La Ladrillera, the red truck is still there. We stop at the edge of the brickyard and drop the women and children off. Felipe tries to persuade them to return to town, but they insist on trying to cross. The dangers and uncertainty of their journey and the possibility of making it across outweighs returning home.

Heading back to my cheap hotel room in Tucson, I think about what I’ve seen. Riding a motorcycle, especially through the desert, provides for quite a bit of time to be with one’s thoughts. My head feels like it’s going to explode in my helmet. It’s so hot.

August 10, 2004 – Email from U.S. Border Patrol Agent

Dear Paul

Just a quick note to thank you again for helping out with the alien that you found on the side of Highway 286. I just wanted to let you know the resolution of what happened that day (to the best of our knowledge).

After you left, we had a flyover of the area west of 286 and north of the ranch at milepost 31 by the Arizona Army National Guard OH-58 that was supporting our operations. Usually they have at least a Borstar agent on board along with the 2 man crew. Approximately 8 agents from our shift and another 4 – 6 from the following shift worked the area that he had told us that the group was at. Basically, after interviewing the guy, we were able to match his footprints to a series of footprints that were running east – west and back again on one of the ranch roads about 3 – 5 miles from 286 approximately across from milepost 36 – 38. The alien was asked to step directly next to one of these tracks and they matched exactly in terms of size and pattern; so it was pretty conclusive that they were his sign. He had apparently gotten disoriented at some point that night and had backtracked at least twice trying to find his group. From that point, it is approximately 7 miles due north to highway 86 and even closer to a very popular load out spot at the southernmost end of Coleman road. From what we could figure from what he showed us; his group had been pretty close to one of the water tanks for the cattle near the eastern edge of the Baboquivari Kitt Peak area. (They couldn’t have gotten much water from the ones that I saw that day; and if they did drink it, they would have possibly gotten sick from the fecal contamination).

Francisco Martinez Espinosa from Tabasco being questioned by U.S. Border Patrol agents near Three Points, Arizona, United States, 2004
© Paul Turounet

I’ve gotten somewhat familiar with the area myself and if you hug the side of the mountains, it adds a bit of walking but by going straight, you will end up just a half mile or so from Coleman Road. Coleman is about a 2 1/2 mile long north south road so it is possible to miss it by walking parallel to it; but even if you did, you would eventually hit the 2 lane east west highway 86. Coleman is a big load out for aliens now; in the past MJ backpackers (marijuana smugglers) used it too but not too much lately. Either way, if the group got to Coleman or 86, they got picked up by someone…either smugglers, friendly folks or us. He didn’t recognize anyone at the station as belonging to his group; so my guess is that after he left to find water, the others left once they thought that he wasn’t coming back. Probably the entire time that he had been searching for water for them, they were moving to be picked up on the highway and might have already been in a drop house by that time.

In any event, fortunately, so far we haven’t made any discoveries of any group that size in the 1100 area west of 286 that had died from the heat. Since that day, neither BP nor aliens have reported any large numbers of dead out there in that area…if there had been reports, we would have heard of this, probably by now. Unfortunately, the agents in the Gila Bend area did find that group a few days ago with the five aliens that had died. In fact, it is averaging still about 1 a day throughout the sector. (You do remember how we talked that one of the reasons that there are so many aliens being found dead has as much to do with having more agents in helicopters, atvs, and horseback as it does with the heat and the number of aliens crossing…you don’t really know if some of them have been dead for 10 years but they are all counted in this year’s tally.

It is truly amazing everyday; today I caught a girl on her 16th birthday. Her group had left her just 1/2 mile or so in the US. I’m not sure what the reason was that they let her fall behind. She had a 1 gallon jug of water, a small bottle of pedialyte when the water were to run out, a plastic garbage bag for the monsoons (if they occurred), a change of clothes, a hat, some food, and the clothes on her back. With her inexperience and the distance she would have had to cover completely alone, there is no doubt in my mind whether she might have made it. She was on the other side of 286 right down near Sasabe. Basically on that side, there is only the Buenos Aires Reserve road system, Arivaca Road at milepost 12 and a ranch road about milepost 16. If she weren’t able to make either of those roads to be picked up, or if she stubbornly kept on going when she ran out of water, there isn’t anything till milepost 30 or so. The saddest thing was that after an interview with the Mexican consulate, she got back on the voluntary return bus to Nogales, Sonora…we couldn’t put her on the airplane to send her back to Chiapas since she was an unaccompanied minor and the current rules don’t allow us to do that, even though in my mind it would make a lot more sense to get them as fast as possible to their home. (Of course, there is probably a very good reason that she left home in the first place!). One common theme that most of these southern Mexicans have is that nobody wants them here and nobody wants them at home either.

Anyway, I appreciate your thoughtfulness and concern and the help you gave us that day. A lot of people wouldn’t have stopped. I hope that your projects are going well and that you get a chance to come out this way again sometime. I wanted to be sure that I was putting out what the best info that I could get about this situation.

Estamos Buscando A – We’re Looking For Installation

Having returned from teaching photography in Guadalajara, Mexico at the end of the summer in 2006, I was watching t.v. when a news story came on discussing the tearing down of the U.S. – Mexico Border Wall at Border State Park, between the San Ysidro, California and Tijuana, Baja California Norte. This is where the steel wall literally runs into the Pacific Ocean for approximately 100 yards, dividing only the flow of the water. I became interested in seeing what was going to happen to the pieces being dismantled and if I could get my hands on them.

I had recently completed a public art, site-specific installation entitled, Más allá – the Retablos of Migrants along the U.S. – Mexico Border, with some of the portraits I had been making. For the site-specific work, I printed some of the initial portraits from Tijuana on 1/4- inch, 16″ x 20″ steel plates and proceeded to rivet them to the border wall in Mexico where the migrant had been photographed. While the steel plates had been permanently riveted to the border, the photographic imagery eventually deteriorated as time passed due to the desert elements of the scorching sun. Only traces of the image remained, providing for a compelling contemplation of the temporal nature of memory and the passage of time.

As I had expanded the project to include other areas of the border, including the Sonora Desert and the Rio Grande region, I wanted to develop and produce an installation that would function as a reference to this initial site-specific sensibility. With the wall being dismantled, I figured there would be scrap pieces that I could use and decided to see what it would take to acquire them.

The next morning I drove down to Border State Park to see what was there and inquired to a U.S. Border Patrol agent as to who had jurisdiction for the dismantling project and scrap pieces. He pointed me in the direction of the U.S. Marine Corps unit that was responsible for the project. I waited for 45 minutes in the hot sun until they stopped working for the day. I approached the officer in charge of the operation and inquired about how I might be able to get some of the pieces as I explained I was an artist working on a photographic project on migrants. He had just returned from Iraq and I could tell he really wasn’t interested in being on the Border. “Fuck, take as much of this shit as you want! We’re here for one more day so if you want it, you need to come get it tomorrow. Doesn’t matter to me.” I’m just glad we’re leaving. I’d rather be back in Iraq than here.” The next day, I rented a moving truck and loaded up 61 pieces of the 4′ and 6′ steel planks that previously been used as temporary aircraft landing ramps during the Vietnam War.

Estamos Buscando A – We’re Looking For : Jose Guadalupe Navarro (Missing Person’s Poster), Three Points, Arizona, 2003
© Paul Turounet

I now have approximately 332′ linear feet of the steel border wall available to suit any type of installation space – enough to make a wall that could be nearly 60 feet long and 12 feet high. Rather than pieces of steel, the Polaroid negatives of each migrant were digitally printed with a warm tone on 16” x 20” aluminum plates that are attached to the salvaged wall pieces, suggesting the essence of the desert landscape, history and memory as well as touching upon such references as 19th-century photographic tintypes, the Mexican religious iconography of the retablo as well as the previous site-specific works.