This is # 2 of my Travel to Oaxaca series: Going to Oaxaca on a regular morning.
My photo journal is not telling anything new but it's showing what I saw between blinking.
Life on earth is a delicate and violent thing and is lived in many ways on thousands of layers and what we try during our little individual journey is to walk with open eyes.
We can never see all, we can never understand all, we hear things here and there, we get glimpses of things, we live on faith and believe what we are told: someone is telling us about algebra, others about quantum mechanics, some tell stories about foreign lands and distant times, some show us how rivers flow and how to cook a vichyssoise, some look inside us, some live in peace, some in squalor, some in richness, all die.
We bring little contributions to this. Here is one.
I favour the first photo and the el-sindicato the most, at least for the moment, commitment is always a challenge when there is so much on offer. To quote I.N.E. Giardina :17 May 2015 6:35:50pm The position that it is not possible to imagine oneself into a radically distinct phenomenal position places a kind of ontology objectivity pertaining to kinds of mental content such as imagination. That is a kind of mental content shares no properties with another mental content qua self is a functionalist account on self [sic]. One of the underpinning primal motivations of artists, at least I believe, is the search for and into the other. To quote again So being part of an -imagined community- of perceiving inter-subjective selves needs an epistemic community, like being part of an enclave. I think you and you work are, like many others here, a fine example of that enclave. A delightful essay.
Summarised: There are vibrant colours all over the show, hustle and bustle, and it shines through the neglect.
I find it interesting that most of the people are walking away from the centre, out of the image. It gives the images the authority of being taken by somebody who is part of the scenery, have invested the time to be able to disappear as photographer.
Wonderful addition to your Oaxaca series. You did "walk with open eyes" and captured what you saw with honesty. I am enjoying the series very much and look forward to part 3.
I've slowly lost interest in photography and instead re-engaged with photographs. Photography is in many ways a faux-art; an artist can take photographs but very few photographers can make art. The paradox is that the more overtly artistic the enthusiast photographer tries to be, very often the less substantial and interesting the product becomes. It is artistically diminished by the process; by the enthusiast photographer looking at the wrong things, and then compounding the missed opportunity by screwing around with what they do see.
Here with this essay we have an artist first and always – I refer to you – and these are the photographs that an artist would take. A painter, especially so. Thus they probably don't much impress the enthusiast photographer (with the possible exception of No 8). But they record and celebrate the things that excite fellow artists, and also inform all of us with an interest in things beyond our own fence. It's the authenticity that matters with this stuff. May I quote J Keats? "Beauty is truth, truth beauty, – that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
Between the parts we throw away. Why do we decide to take a picture? This is unique for everybody and It’s a joy to ride along on your adventure. The first image lets us know this isn’t a series of travel brochure photographs. A cracked window, primitive architecture and a folk art painting start us on our way. Your essay is a wonderful collection of glimpses as we travel down the road to Oaxaca. Images 1,3, 7, and 11 are my favorites but everything fits together nicely. Thanks
I feel like this is in the "foreign correspondent" tradition, where the new truths come from the friction (or at least the distance) between observer and observed, which is symbolized by the fairly obvious visual cues that we are looking through a car window for most of these photos. You have more people in your photos than 2mccs and ubique, and it works for you. They are part of the world you are visiting and observing. I feel privileged to have such intimate reports from three different worlds. Thank you.
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