San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
|
||
Dancers
|
||
|
|
Someone said that shooting in San Miguel is
like fishing a stocked pond. Good pictures are impossible not to take. The colors of the
buildings, the way the light reflects from a fountain, the terra cotta and the
cobblestones and the walls and the doors, oh, the doors, thick carved wood and ornaments
and fat iron hinges and locks that look as though they date from the decade after
Conquest. But how to make compelling pictures, photos that contain more than this seductive veneer? I’m a photographer dependent on my internal state to make photos. I need to feel grounded enough in a place for the work to emerge. And I didn’t have that for most of today. The sun is brutal. Not only for myself, who vastly prefers damp and cloudy, but for the film. The brightness range is extreme, no film can capture it. I am burned, dehydrated, and weary of noise, the crowds, a car fleet with no pollution controls and of the wall of incomprehension when I attempt to converse. In the more travelled parts of town people are not so friendly. The vendors have seen too many touristas with expensive cameras, and demand money for photos. After siesta, and about a gallon of aqua, the sun was low and I was moderately revived. Robin and I walked through a forested park full of exotic bird calls. We heard music, and closer, rhythmic steps of many dancers. On a patio, outside the Cultural Institute, were a flock of brightly dressed girls, from tiny 5 yr olds to pre-teens. They were dancing el jarabe tapatio, the one where you wave your skirt back and forth and spin. They played and roughoused like kids, then lined up and then obediently danced through their moves with the gentle encouragement of their instructor. The setting was magical. Backlit sun against a forest, trees arching overhead, and beautiful young girls dancing exuberantly. On the bright yellow wall, illuminated by the setting sun, were their shadows, their dancing twins in two dimensions. |
|
| Next Entry |