Monday, April 23, 2012

My Mother's Red Shawl - El Rebozo Colorado
Ivtte Hernández - Actress



Rebozo Rojo!
The Rebirth of Art

Red
Beginning and End
Circle of Life and Death
Like the Sunrise and Sunset
Like the Blood that gives Life and an End

Rebozo
Covers, warm, holds together.
It shelters from the sun
It warms in a cold day
It brings together a mother with her child.






Red is always present in Mexican culture. It is present in the Aztecs and Mayans who painted their pyramids and their writing with red. Present in sacred blood that brings life and death. Present in the blood spread during our revolution that made us an independent nation.

The rebozo is always present. It is present in the life of a woman. It covers her face from the sun and cold. It helps her when she holds on to it during labour. It carries and hugs hers children when they are being held, being feed and put to sleep.

The red rebozo portrait is very special to me. In 2010 I was asked to take part in photo-sessions connected to my Mexican roots. I happily agreed as I was born in León, Guanajuato. I love my heritage as well as photography. This was my first artistic and professional project and I was ecstatic.

My dear friend and photography mentor and I spent several days exchanging ideas, sharing memories and creating new pictures symbolizing old events, photographs and people. This was a project that was my first exposure to posing and perhaps the last of its kind. I will not soon forget it.

For me the photo with the red rebozo symbolizes the beginning and end.

Red is like the passion that gives birth to creations. In this image it began as the photographer’s idea, it materialized with the help of light, a subject and objects, a camera. It ends on photographic paper or in the photons of your computer monitor. Once there it has its own life. I cannot be destroyed unless red fire intervenes. Like the spirit in the photographer’s heart that burns with passion to create art. Art that once is born and expressed, it will never die. This is the circle of Life for Art….

For me this photo symbolizes togetherness. Rebozo, the Mexican rebozo that brings us together, that keeps the warmth and cools us in heat.

Today as 2012 that building where the picture was taken is gone. It has been demolished. This brings me some sort of melancholy for those days, but also leaves me with happiness for what I was able to experience and express in those walls. Those walls are gone physically but their memory remains as well as this photo. They are alive.

Byron Chief-Moon Actor/Dancer
Colin Horricks Doctor
Ian Mulgrew Vancouver Sun Columnist
Jocelyn Morlock Composer
Corinne McConchie Librarian
Rachel Ditor Dramaturg
Patrick Reid Statesman, Flag Designer
Michael Varga CBC Cameraman
Bronwen Marsden Playwright/Actress/Director
David Baines Vancouver Sun Columnist
Alex Waterhouse-Hayward Photographer
Lauren Elizabeth Stewart Student
Sandrine Cassini Dancer/Choreographer
Meredith Kalaman Dancer/Choreographer
Juliya Kate Dominatrix