Shadow Shot Sunday 74 - Coyoacan

Strolling recently down Calle Francisco Sosa in Coyoacan in bright summer sunshine, I came across this fascinating pattern of shadows on the coppery-coloured wall of a colonial house. If you know Mexico at all, then you will immediately recognise what is responsible for the circular loop shadow that dominates the pattern....

Yes, you are right - loops and loops and loops of spare cable!!

Look up on any Mexican street and you will always see above your head an immense tangle of wires and cables and loops that on first sight may be dismissed as an ugly, chaotic jumble, but look again, and to me they take on a strange kind of beauty - another iconic image defining this sprawling metropolis that really shouldn't function at all, but always does in the most unexpected and delightfully surreal of ways... These are the cables and wires on my corner...

Finding such beauty in perhaps what should be considered ugly, takes me back to an exhibition I first saw in London in 2003 of the work of Mexican photographer, Enrique Metinides, of Greek origin, whose job it was to photograph the bodies of the newly dead for the front page of the tabloid newspaper "Nota Roja" (Bloody News) from 1949 - 1979. Although his photographs were of murder, crime or accident victims, there was nothing morbid, sensationalist or gratuitous about his images, and the aesthetic artistic quality of his work has led to his photographs being exhibited in art galleries all around the world. Obviously the different cultural approach to death in Mexico, and the fact that there is an openness and lack of cultural taboo, plays a significant role in how we can read and interpret his images. I remember one truly arresting, haunting and memorable shot of a telephone worker who had been electrocuted as he worked on the cables, and he lay back cradled by the wires high in the sky, frozen in time for ever by this shot. It should have been an ugly and morbid image but in my opinion it was stunningly beautiful.... What do you think? Have I been affected too much by Mexico's openness in approach to death....

(image by Enrique Metinides, Mexico City, 1971)

As Day of the Dead, Mexico's unique festival for celebrating the cycle of life through honouring and respecting the dead, approaches once again, I am reminded how much I have learnt from living in this amazing and inspiring country. For more shadow photography this week check out Shadow Shot Sunday by clicking here....