Estado de México - 1972

It was in1992 that I met in Vancouver a Jewish, redhaired Mexican who had an art gallery called the Threshold. He attempted with mixed results to introduce to culturally deprived Vancouverites the wonders of Mexican muralists and artists.

I wrote about him here.

And here.

As I try to organize my old negatives in these cold January 2022 days, I stop to look at some of the photographs that I took in Mexico as a street photographer.

Frid told me that my so-called talent of taking photographs of undraped females was a total waste of my talent. He said I should have returned to Mexico and to keep shooting street photographs. He said I was very good and that what I was doing was a tragedy.

These two photographs here were taken one right after the other at a church in the Estado de México not far from where Rosemary, our two daughters, my mother and I lived in Arboledas. I would sometimes pick up my Pentacon-F and my then improved camera, a Pentax S-3 and go exploring with friends in what we called camera safaris.

In this church they had a Jesus outside in a horizontal position that was known to have miracle-inducing ability to cure diseases. People would come and touch their affected limbs, stomachs, etc and touch the corresponding parts on the Christ.

The first photograph I know elicited a remark from my mother that Mexicans were in general fatalistic and depressed peoples. I would have agreed with her when looking at the little boy, much older than he is in some way. But I would have added that the folks who lived in Yucatán and Veracruz who were more Caribbean in nature where a happier people.

I seems I snapped my photograph at the right time. And yet I like the second one I took right after. It is an after-the-fact photograph that leaves many questions unanswered.