On the outskirts of town in the Rio Laja river basin, it is interesting to witness time and nature reverse, if only temporarily. Watching the waters created by the man-made Presa Allende dam slowly recede during the dry season, one sees the stone remnants of past human settlements reappear. Cattle, goats and horses graze along the newly revealed river. Corn and beans are planted on the fertile, silty plains lining the banks. Trees, twisted and water-logged–water lines permanently branded, dry out. All ends when the summer rains come and the sluice gate drops. The river is submerged once again; the stones return to their watery graves and the birds return.
Photography is about the past. The second the shutter clicks, the image captured will never occur again either in the present or the future. Portraits especially reflect this concept–whether a minute, a decade or a century old–the photograph before us is "what has been," according to French philosopher and semiotician Roland Barthes.
To gaze at portraits is to be a time traveler. To receive a disconcerting or profound look in the subject's eyes before our lens–an animal or human–or to capture a lifestyle, occupation or moment of pleasure is to imagine and preserve the past if only for the immediate future.
Holy Week is a space in time betwixt and between the normal working year. It occurs every Spring. Children and adults parade; priests pontificate and pray. The streets are adorned with decorations in purple and white, bouquets of flowers, clusters of balloons, velvet draperies, wooden crosses, statues of saints and virgins, and delicately-cut papal picado squares strung as streamers across streets. These decorative elements and the mass of costumed townspeople, brought together in one huge collaboration, transform the town into a grand stage–a theater for the reenactment of the "Passion of Christ."
A mix of the sacred and the profane, Día de los Muertos celebrates the dead and the fantasy of the culture of death.
Vistas de Largo Pátzcuaro
Lakes and Rivers don’t last forever.
To have a ringside seat is to see the many changing views of a drying, dying lake: early morning fog, sunsets and storms; nights when the lights of Isla de Janitzio twinkle like a Christmas tree; gas-fueled launches making trips back and forth as men in canoes choreograph with empty butterfly nets—hands out to receive alms from tourists. On the other side of the lake, despite the encroaching ‘liria,’ the water is cleaner, working fishermen seine with nets for their catch at Chupicuaro.
David Perry wrote in his poem “Ancestral lines:”
following the others’….,
the tracks of somebody gone before,
leaving mischievous clues, telling me who
they were and who it was they weren’t,
and who it is I am because of them,
The slow disappearance of a lake/island culture: Glad to be a brief witness to the unique beauty that still exists.