The exit and the entrance --all the same to me.
Exit to Francisco I. Madero in Mexico City's downtown.
The word is out that in spite of the low misery index in the U.S.A. the race for the party nominee for president on both political spectrums proves Americans are none the less angry. Perhaps, I really don't know; I am in Mexico and it's not that I can care less as I am an American living abroad.
No matter where we live in this world we all want to be happy and what makes people happy changes from culture to culture. In the end, I guess, we are all looking for the light at the end of the tunnel when things get dire
Dunning-Kruger and the stories we tell ourselves
En movimiento sobre Eje Central, Centro Historico - Ciudad de Mexico.
After listening to a podcast on the Dunning-Kruger Effect —when an incompetent person is unaware of his own incompetence— I could not help but ask myself if I suffer from this cognitive inability to recognize my own incompetence when in comes to my photography. Many times I've asked myself —and still do— if my photography will ever measure up ; if I should just give up and seek something else I might be "good" at? But I couldn't get myself to do it if I came to a full realization of skills I might lack in this activity I enjoy so much since I was a child. I enjoy making images too much. I love stories and making photos is my way of capturing and sharing them.
Yes, I know I am just capturing the light of a given moment and how that moment is interpreted, or the story told, will be different from person to person, but it's a story nonetheless.
Interested in knowing more about the Dunning-Kruger Effect, check it out here.
Bacon Street
Entertainiment for the masses along Av. Francisco I. Madero, Centro Historico - Mexico City.
Street performers or street laborers --take your pick-- are said to be a too-easy target for street photography. My concern with these so-called rules of what not to photograph --or does not count as a worthy photograph-- is that it sort of robs of the joy of simply capturing what one finds interesting. Photography, for me at least, is not so much what you photograph as much as how it is photographed and timing, of course.
¿Tienes frío? (Are you cold?)
A woman reaches for a sweater donated by the public in Mexico City. A group of journalists and photojournalists kicked off a campaign this winter labeled with the Twitter hashtag #SinFrioDF to get folks to donate clothing to those in need.
I get asked these days by friends and family abroad about how Mexico is doing. Almost immediately an image of former President Carlos Salinas on the cover of Time Magazine in 1993 with the headline "Mexico Is Looking Up" flickers across my mind followed by the rest of significant events since then. Indeed, in spite of the economic turmoil that ensued in December of 1994 as the Mexican peso plunged things did take a turn for the better shortly thereafter. The party lasted a while as NAFTA began to take root and the world economy boomed. Mexico could have used this period of growth to diversify its economy, but didn't and the opportunity was ignored at a hefty price: its future.
Today Mexico is struggling to stay on its two feet as it fights destructive gusts from internal and external whirlwinds. Dreams of one day joining a dwindling middle class are being crushed as poverty rises in a country where approximately 50% of the population already faces extreme economic hardship and reduced life chances. Inflation on some basics suffered significant increase according to some figures released at the start of the year while the current administration lives in denial of both the rise in deaths from the drug war as of 2014 and the impact of the commodity and currency crisis on the nation's economy. Just to think where things could be taken if the people who could make a difference were concerned with being transparent about the issues. Recognizing a problem brings you that much closer to fixing it, if it's not too late of course.
Tower, light, and people
Downtown Mexico City looking towards one of Mexico City's most iconic landmarks.
A view towards Mexico City's iconic Torre Latino Americano from Av. Francisco I. Madero in the Centro Historico.
em·brace əmˈbrās/
From this weekend while roaming downtown, Mexico City. A cliché moment, perhaps, but nonetheless meaningful to human experience. Margaret Meade once stated that "one of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don't come home at night." It's so true, so descriptive --in part-- of the human condition.
"One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don't come home at night." -- Margaret Meade
Sombras
Chasing light and shadows in Mexico City's historic downtown area. A lot has changed since I first came to know this area. I worked here for five years. Though I don't commute into the area everyday as I did then, much of my photography is executed in this very exciting niche of this vast urban space.
Morning Push
Sanitation worker chugs along Cafetales Ave. in the Coyoacan municipality of Mexico City.
Morning push for a sanitation worker in the southern end of Mexico City.
Calling It In
Improvised hazard warning.
After residing here in Mexico for several years I can boastfully claim that I shed my tourist identity a long time ago. Each return visit to my native United States becomes an out of body experience as I progressively feel more like an outsider; though I haven't fully assimilated the culture of the place that has become my new home since the year 2000, I don't feel as "American" as I once had. Not that I am anti-American. What I mean is that I simply don't see the world like I used to; I no longer take many things for granted as I once did. Some of my compatriots back home, if not many, behave as if they have a right to security, peace, and prosperity having no idea that in some ways that life is the exception when compared to what other folks --as human as themselves-- face in other parts of the world. My Mexico experience hasn't been an easy road: I've had to battle my inner streaks of ethnocentrism, adapt to a different way of seeing the world, to a whole new set of realities. All this has served to help shape who I am today, even towards personal growth.
Something I've had to get used to are the lumpy, pot-holed streets of Mexico City's roads which can make you quite deft at defensive driving as you are forced to add this to the list of potentially hazardous phenomena to watch out for when traversing this urban chaos. The above image illustrates an act of solidarity where folks will warn others of a danger ahead. Sadly, a lack of proper street lighting at night may foster the very accident the protrusion was signaling you to avoid.
Urban Commuter
Afternoon at Grand Central Station in New York City.
Rush hour at Grand Central Station.
Blow
One of my initial images circa 2006. I had asked him to pose for the shot; instead, he began to blow into the crucible. When I first came to Mexico, and until recently, you could find these shaman all over the city's largest municipal square -- El Zocalo. I speculate a recent policy move by the federal district authorities has kept them from operating in the area; It has been a while since I've witnessed any shaman executing their alternate medicinal practices at the Zocalo. Instead they have been dispersed to other parts of the downtown area and in dwindling numbers.