Mostly somewhere else

San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato

Saturday 4 November 2006

Today in class we reviewed the photos we took yesterday, the free afternoon when we could take the pictures we wanted. In the review process Raul took mercy on us & let us include an emotional choice along with the ones he selected to show. So everybody got one freebie that he wouldn’t have included otherwise, which was a big joke since everyone had been campaigning every day for a picture that they liked that he said was … well, not junk, but didn’t work for one reason or another. Scott, the rancher from Corpus, wanted one of some kids at a birthday party on a roof because he liked the kid in the bunny costume. It really WAS junk, but made everybody laugh.

Several of us decided to visit the sanctuary in Atontonilco, which is from the 1700s and supposed to be very interesting. We met for lunch then grabbed a couple of cabs for the 20-minute ride. They agreed to wait for us about an hour since there’s not really a town there, just the church.

When we got there a wedding was just finishing, with folks taking photos of the couple in front of the church etc. we all went into the church to check it out & see if we could get some shots in the very low light (I didn’t have much light. Suddenly there was the sound of a mariachi band, which I thought was part of the wedding party outside, then I turned around to see a coffin being wheeled in, followed by mariachis & sobbing family. Yikes – trapped! I quickly filed out skirting the wall with some other visitors who realized they too were in the right place, but definitely at the wrong time.

We were taking some photos & visiting outside when a procession of women came along carrying a banner & singing & tried to get into the church in spite of the funeral in progress. Wow! The place was just jumping!

The image that’s associated with this church is Christ of the Column, a statue of Jesus beaten up & whipped, leaning on a marble pillar. James said in his best New York Jewish voiceI just can’t help but think he looks like a guy leaning on the bar & commiserating with the bartender – Such a day I’ve had, you wouldn’t believe. First a guy kisses me, then flagellation, what next?

We went back to the hotel & met for dinner that evening. It was a nice celebratory, glass-clicking occasion. End of the workshop, a week of lots of learning, beautiful weather, interesting places, & new friends. Couldn’t’ve been better, really. Everybody but me brought their cameras, & took photos of each other across the candlelight. A mariachi played for a group of rather drunk young Mexicans at the next table, and they were singing along enthusiastically, which caused running commentary at our table. We even ordered dessert, one being crepas en cajeta Had no idea it was going to be a production until a guy brought a big tray with a zillion ingredients & a fire to the table. He cooked the sauce tableside, added the crepes, put it on a plate, the plate on the table, then lit some alcohol & drizzled it all over the plate, beautiful blue flames. Cameras were clicking like wild.

The back to the Jardín in front of the Parroquia to tell the city goodbye, enjoy the almost-full moon on such a beautiful night, and take increasingly goofy group photos. Back to the hotel to … pack. Ugh.

Sunday 5 November 2006

An hour & half on a van to León, 7 of us crammed in like sardines with everyone having at least one suitcase, a camera bag, and a body, some being larger than others. I discovered on the ride that Scott is a diver too, so we had lots of war stories to share.

At the airport Scott was going to be kicked off he plane, making him miss his connection to Corpus. They asked for a volunteer to give up their seat and I told them if they didn’t find anyone else that I would consider it. I already had an upgrade to 1st & the next plane was a tiny one 3 hrs later. They came back to me offering a $300 certificate & I talked them up to $450 and a lunch voucher, so I stayed in the León airport until the next flight & got back home about 7 pm. Altogether a good trip, & the flight certificate was just the icing on the cake.

San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato

Friday 3 November 2006

Here is the schedule we are following every day (except the long long day when we traveled to Tzintzuntzan): breakfast 8 (refried beans, eggs, some kind of bread, fruit), at 9 review images from the day before individually with the teacher, select the best ones, have a little show of everyone’s stuff, then a bit of a lecture about … something photographical, break for lunch at 12, then about 3 head out as a group to shoot someplace. Stay as long as you want, eat dinner on your own and sometimes shoot at night as a group too.

There are 12 people in the class. Many are from Texas –Houston, SA, Dallas, Round Rock, Corpus, and a couple of others are in California now but are from Texas originally. Most are in some kind of creative work – my friend James is a sitcom writer who also teaches at NYU, the best photographer is a young film guy from LA (you should hear those 2 talking about TV & movies, all kinds of gossipy insider stuff), a couple of professional photographers, a book designer, an artist. The just plain folks are me, a rancher, a guy who works all over the world for Dell, and a radiologist from Boston.

As the week has developed I would say that most of the others are better photographers than I am. Not surprising! I have a lot of work to do to reach the level Raul wants us to be working. I have learned a lot that I need to practice practice practice on.

Interestingly enough, I’m the only one who speaks Spanish beyond the una cerveza por favor level, so others have been asking me to help when we’re out & about, in restaurants, or esp if they’re shopping. Total strangers come up & ask, which is gratifying but a bit of a responsibility too, to get it right for them.

This is our free afternoon, while the teachers are building the final slideshow of the best of the best, that we will share with the other class at a celebratory dinner tonight. We can go where we want & shoot or just buy souvenirs, hang out, read, rest. etc. I went back to the internet place, which was STILL closed, so I couldn’t send anything AGAIN; helped an American talk to an antiques guy about some monster doors, how old are they, what kind of wood, getting them finished & shipped; then went back to town to take pictures of … doors & walls & hardware. Easy subjects that don’t move around on you, but here with a lot of texture & color & variation from elegant polished brass to a plain hole in the wooden door for the mail to slip in.

We met for dinner at a nice restaurant then watched the show. I only had 4 things in it, but he did use one of mine for the opening shot. Everybody’s been giving me a hard time about that all week, since he saw our stuff on the first review & said that my shot was probably going to open the show. Teacher’s pet etc.

Some folks went out to take MORE pictures, but I came back to download & sleep!

San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato

Thursday 2 November 2006

Today is the holiday when everyone is off, All Souls Day I guess. Walked down, way down to the internet place yesterday, but it was closed.

Yesterday afternoon we went to the cemetery here in the city, which has a much different feel than the country one the night before. The people here are … sadder, I guess. This is just a hasty generalization, but it’s as if the rural folks are comforted by the thought that they can feel the presence of their “dear departed” one night a year, and feel joy in that. It’s worth it to spend the night in the cemetery if you can really be together. The city folk come to clean the graves, place flowers (not food or drinks), and sit a while, maybe have a small prayer service, but not so joyously. Some were weeping, others in deep thought. It was altogether more solemn, which is not to say there weren’t plenty of kids running around & playing, & families enjoying a chance to visit.

When I say they “place flowers,” don’t think of a pitiful little bouquet laid on a gravestone. They fill the grave to overflowing with all kinds of flowers – traditional marigolds, delicate white nubes, cockscomb, and gladioli, also what we would consider “arrangements” of roses etc. you can hardly see over the top of the flowers, and they are so packed that they spill over the sides.

I started by taking some shots of the vendors outside the cemetery, families working together selling flowers, snacks, or dinners to the folks passing through on their way to the graves.

The cemetery was so MUCH, so full of people & graves & flowers that it was hard to focus on any one thing to photograph, so I decided to take a few of the over-the-top graves, people moving around, the busy-ness of the place, then focus more on the forgotten graves of people who have no family left or whose families have moved away too far to come back. These neglected graves are in stark contrast to the freshly painted and almost overly flowered ones that surround them. Most of them have a flower or two dropped on them by sympathetic passers-by.

I stayed in the cemetery until the light was gone, and suddenly a huge white light came on & illuminated a big corner of the place, which created a strange look of stark white graves against the night. I took some photos of that & stayed until they shut the place down at 7 pm.

Last night we had a group dinner at a local house that the Santa Fe Workshop people keep here in San Miguel. It was a typical Spanish design, flat ugly walls outside hiding a beautiful house inside, with a couple of courtyards, three stories, and a beautiful view of the city from the roof. We ate traditional Mexican food – shredded chicken, beans, white rice with veggies, poblano peppers in a cream sauce, guacamole, tortillas. Some tequila was also available, but I had fruit juice, guayaba maybe?

Returned to the hotel to download pix off my camera & try to get to bed early after so little sleep yesterday. Nighty- night.

San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato

Sunday 29 October 2006

Arrived in San Miguel last night by bus from Morelia, about a 4-hr ride with 2 intermediate stops, I don’t know where. Got to the hotel here about 10 pm. It’s a nice place, with a large flower-filled courtyard. Slept until 9:30, which turned out to be 8:30 because of the time change. Grabbed some breakfast & then headed out into the town.

San Miguel is one of the colonial towns in the heart of Mexico, along with Morelia, Guanajuato, etc. It started in 1542, and soon became a Spanish garrison town along the road between Zacatecas, a silver center, and Mexico City, where they needed the silver to send back to Spain & probably be insanely wealthy themselves in the bargain.

It’s now called San Miguel de Allende because of its way-way favorite son, Ignacio Allende, a VERY big name in the Mexican War for Independence that began in 1810. Although Hidalgo made the “grito de Dolores,” calling people to revolt, around here they say that it was Allende who talked him into joining the revolutionary group in the first place.

The city is hilly, lots of up & down, and the streets AND sidewalks are all cobblestone, so there’s nowhere to walk to give your feet a break. But the city is so colorful & beautiful & … well, Mexican, that you just keep going. In the central area there doesn’t seem to be any corner or stretch of street that isn’t fascinating.

Today I tried to hit most of the high points so I would know my way around & have an idea later in the week of where to return to. So I went to a LOT of churches, the civic center Bellas Artes, several of the plazas. A high point was in the Jardín, the plaza in front of the main church, the Parroquia. There were two groups of mariachis who were just sitting around and I started visiting with them. They were big jokers and it was a lot of fun. And they let me take some photos, without even asking for money for it, which was a good thing.

I got back to the hotel about 5:30 and the group got together at 6 for drinks (whoa! I went all the way & got a coke!) and then had dinner together, followed by a brief photo show of pix taken by former teachers & students, to get people ready for the week. There are two classes running at once; ours is Day of the Dead, 12 people, & theirs is something about color in Mexico, 8 people, run by a landscape photographer. Our teacher is Raul Touzon, a documentary photographer who works with National Geographic. He was born in Cuba, then moved to Puerto Rico as a young boy, now lives in Miami (and says he hates it, but hasn’t moved either).

Tomorrow we have breakfast in the hotel, followed by a class that runs till about 2 or 3. After I dump my photos from today onto my computer, I’d better get to bed. My legs are so sore that I will have to take a Tylenol to get to sleep!

Monday 30 October 2006

Class started today. I didn’t know what to expect, but it went well. You always wonder if the other students are a lot more advanced than you or more “artistic,” coming up with a lot better images or a different way of seeing something, but we all seem to be on about the same level. (In that last sentence we should change “you” to “I.”) Some of the folks have a great edgy feel to their photos which I would like to learn how to do – I think my stuff is all pretty obvious & not surprising, which I would enjoy doing. Oh well maybe this week.

We started with an overview of technical stuff like aperture, lenses, white balance etc., then moved into some ideas about composition. This is an interesting area of photography, because there actually are certain rules about how to put a photo together so that it works, but you can break them anytime you want – but it’s better if you do it so that it’s obvious you know you’re doing it (huh?!?!?!). anyway as always our teacher here is very opinionated about everything. Everything. You should get close to the subject, use wide lenses, tilt the camera this way & that, etc. There will be some head bashing as the week progresses.

The main thing is that he wants us to work totally in manual, with nothing automatic except focus. This is a huge change for everybody. Looks like we’re all lazy, using automatic settings. This will be a challenge.

After class we headed for the Plaza Civil, which has a temporary market for Day of the Dead set up “next door.” We were going to shoot from 4-6, but I thought that 6 was when the light was best, so I stayed. The booths, which are made by draping white plastic sheeting over a squarish frame to make walls, had their lights turned on after the sun went down, so there were opportunities to shoot people’s faces with the light falling on them. I also got a couple of photos that (so far) are the front-runners for the show at week’s end – skeletons & cut paper with a skull & the words LA MUERTE, viewed as shadows through the plastic. Too artsy for words.

Morelia, Michoacan

Friday 27 October 2006

Gabi reserved today for us to spend together, and we had a good time visiting Patzcuaro & Erongaricuaro (“Eronga”) & just talking & catching up & laughing a lot.

We got up about 8 and ate a big breakfast of , tea, papaya, toasted rolls spread with avocado, & eggs scrambled with salsa. Then we took off for Eronga, where a little old very old lady lives who sews traditional clothes, some with embroidery or cross-stitching, & others with patterns in the weave separated & tied in small areas to make a design. Something like the Mexican papeles picadas, the cut paper squares you see hanging from the ceiling at almost every Mexican restaurant.

Gabi is a big advocate of buying local products created or grown by local people, something it seems that Michoacán is catching on to – there were even billboards advocating it. This is an approach we could take in the US, and benefit from greatly – imagine fruit or vegetables that didn’t get picked & packed green, appearing in the grocery store days & days later, without texture or taste. Oh well. well, anyway, a few years ago I bought some pants from this lady, named Celia, and asked if we could come back. I got another pair of pants & some blouses from her. The cloth she uses is woven by her brother. There was an unfinished blouse that she said she would finish for me if we wanted to come back, so we went on to Patzcuaro.

Patzcuaro is a smallish but important city in the area. The area formerly “run” by the indigenous Purepecha before the Spanish showed up surrounds a lake called Lago de Patzcuaro. The names of many of the towns around the lake end in –cuaro, which must mean “the place of …” each has its own specialty, because of a priest named Quiroga who was sent by the Spanish crown(in the late 1500s?) to rectify the maltreatment of the locals by the priests who were there at the time. He was a bit of a utopian who proposed that each community support itself by developing a craft, and trading with each other & with outsiders. Some make masks, others copper pieces, wooden sculptures, furniture, ceramics, pottery, baskets, weaving, and handwork like cross-stitch & embroidery.

The week of el día de los muertos (Day of the Dead) there is a large crafts fair in Patzcuaro where people come from all the local towns to sell their merchandise. They were just getting set up today, so we walked around a bit to look at what was out & chat with the vendors. I bought some wooden spoons made from a dark wood that the fellow called granadillo.

We had lunch at a restaurant called El Primer Piso (since it’s on the second floor – in Latin America, like Spain, the second floor is called the first, and what we call the first floor is the ground floor, planta baja. The restaurant overlooks the Plaza de Quiroga, so we were able to watch all the preparations for the fair, which starts tomorrow.

On the way back to Eronga we passed a place Gabi had heard about, so we pulled over & I took a few photos. There are some local folks who have put together a shrine for worshipping death, or I guess I should say Death. I’ve read about this in our papers, about people who think this will bring them luck or something?!?!? Anyway, in the niches where there would normally be an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe or some saint or another, there were carvings of death, as a skeleton, holding a skull. Hmmmm.

We picked up my clothes from Celia, and for the first time she let Gabi take some pieces to sell for her at tomorrow’s dinner – lots of friends & relatives some together to celebrate el día de los muertos by reading poems they have written about death. The only “ticket” into the dinner is to have brought a poem. But more on that later.

After our shopping trip we came back to visit with Biela, Gabi’s daughter who is expecting a baby in December she showed us her baby furniture & clothes & toys & all, and of course the two old women had to drag out tons of advice. Just what she didn’t particularly want to hear, I’m sure. Her husband El Gnomo was on his way from Mexico City, bringing along Gabi’s spn Sergio & his girlfriend Diana. When they got in at 10:30 we went to eat dinner at a taco place. Yummy.

We got back about midnight & went to bed. Tomorrow is the big dinner & we need to rest up!

Morelia, Michoacan

Thursday 26 October 2006
I am in Mexico for about 10 days, visiting my friend Gabi in Morelia then going on to San Miguel de Allende for a photo workshop.

I arrived at the Morelia airport last night about 8pm, then took a cab ride of ~ 1 hr to get to Gabi’s house. The airport is way out of town & on the absolute opposite side from Avenida Fuentes de Morelia, Gabi’s street. Chatted all the way with the taxista, who spent 12 yrs in the US, in Chicago & New Jersey but didn’t particularly want to speak English, & I wanted to practice Spanish anyway.
We ate a little merienda & went to bed about 10:30. Gabi had a meeting this morning & I told her to just go ahead, I would sleep till I woke up. Which was 10am! That’s my idea of a vacation! When she got back we went to see her new townhouse which is being built, along with a second one she’s buying for an investment & will rent to some co-workers. They are in a new development of about 500 townhouses, but are clustered in small groups of about 20 houses, so it seems more small.

Then we went to the bus station to get my ticket for San Miguel (130 pesos, about $13) and went downtown to get a gazpacho (chopped mango, pineapple, & jicama, with chili powder & cheese mixed in). We decided that I would stay in el centro & wander around while she went to a meeting, then she would come back & we would eat dinner together. So I visited the artesanías at San Francisco (ex) church, and didn’t buy anything (!!!) then visted the Palacio del Gobierno, also an ex-convent, which has very dramatic murals showing the history of the area, winding up the stairs & around the second floor.
All the large buildings in this part of Mexico are plain straight walls with practically no windows on the outside, but when you go through the monster wooden outside door, you step into an incredible patio of 2 stories, with the rooms along the outside walls on both floors. Usually there is a fountain in the center of the patio, so it’s quite dramatic. That secretive Moorish architecture in the Americas by way of Spain.

Back to the Palacio. They were putting up an interesting exhibit of … how to put it? … well, photos of dead babies. These were from the 50s, from a town a bit northwest of here. I talked to the lady who was putting the installation up & she said the people wanted a photo of the child that died to remember it by. Some were on biers of flowers etc & others were in tiny coffins. Some were almost in costumes, like the Sacred Heart etc. Most had their brothers & sisters standing next to them, or even holding the coffin. I was fascinated & would have gone back to see it when it opened at 7pm, but Gabi didn’t want to. I didn’t think she would! As would no normal person, I’m sure.

Then I walked down to the Conservatorio de las Rosas, an ex-convent which is now a music school. I sat in the patio a while enjoying the pretty plants, beautiful weather, and listening to the students practice. Afterwards I went inside the church there, which is almost taller than it is long, with gold everywhere. There were some interesting niches along the inside walls, with small barred windows into small cells in the convent, now with statues of saints inside. The guard there told me that these were for confession. The priests sat inside the church and the sisters were on the other side of the bars. We speculated about what they could possibly confess, being cloistered, and decided that it must be bad thoughts. A strange & somewhat disturbing idea to the non-Catholic.

Eventually met back up with Gabi & we listened & watched a long time & laughed & smiled & made comments to each other about a fabulous event there in the plaza. Once a month the city sponsors a dance for the old folks, big band music from the 40s played (and sung!) by a local combo of about 5 musicians. Old folks dancing together, sometimes even two women, and let me tell you, those old guys with their belts practically up around their ears were making some serious dance moves. It was so great to see fellows with skin almost black from so many years in the sun, hooked noses & serious deeply wrinkled faces, cowboy hats & all, bustin’ a move. Chunky ladies with purple hair (really), one dancing with her purse over her shoulder & chewing gum. In time to the cha-cha-cha of course. Just listening to the music Gabi & I were bustin’ a few moves ourselves. It was great fun.

We walked across th a restaurant with some tables under the porticos across from the plaza & ate salads for dinner. Mine was nopalito (cactus) with lettuce, avocado, grilled chicken, and topped off with chicharrones, which we call … whoops, I forgot … fried pig skins, anyhow. A seriously Mexican salad.
I topped the night off by getting an ice cream bar - Magnum Classic, for those who have had them outside the US. I don’t know why we can’t figure out how to put together a seriously decent ice cream bar in the US, which is the only country I’ve been in that doesn’t have them. Enough of a tirade for now.
Time for bed, since I’ve been up over 12 hours!