The Oaxaca Diaries 2021: Ocotlán
The last part of the journey I can only describe in part. And some things I can't reveal publicly. I will only tell you that, especially in the last part of this journey, I lived an experience between hyper real and metaphysical.
Divinity
I absolutely have to eat something to lower the effect of mezcal. So we decidedto go to eat something at the Ocotlan market where there is Frida and her fantastic and skilful cooking.
Catrina at the market
Frida
Frida and Carmen
Frida remembers us and we chat for a while after eating her delicious dishes. This hug between my wife and her says more than so many words Thank you, Frida.
I invite you to taste her delicious dishes if you go to Ocotlan.
Out of the market
In the city of Ocotlan we are short, the time to reach a mototaxi but this does not prevent me from taking some shots on the fly of what seems interesting to me.
Mom and daughter
Shop
Motorcycle taxi
Oco street
Oco street 2
We enter the artisan workshop of Maestro José García where at the entrance as a tradition there is an ofrenda.
Sculptures
Sculptures 2
Clay sculptures surround the path that leads us to the actual workshop. and finally we meet José García. He has totally lost his sight for 7 years but that doesn't stop him from continuing to work as usual. His wife now helps him.
During the chat the master begins to give his interpretation of the apocalypse from the bible. The story is absolutely lucid and finds many points of connection with the situation that we are all experiencing. This is dismaying because he cannot have access to the net like we do. I promised not reveal in the specific about the speech, and I will not do. Suffice it to say that I came out of there even more aware of certain things.
As I listen to it I start taking pictures. I take a lot of photos and this is my selection for you.
José García
Experiences like this are refreshing. They allow you to grow and that's exactly the reason why I do photography first and foremost.
We arrived to the end of these diaries…
From this trip I returned with the satisfaction of having encountered absolutely different stories from other years.
My photography seems to be different and this has to do with the lenses used but also, if not above all, from a different approach. I have always believed that a photographer should always be ready to question everything and through this mentality I have seen how he can still count with room for improvement.
I could have stayed in the comfort zone and done more or less what I did in previous years, but that wouldn't have been right. I am a photographer of the present and not of visual rhetoric.
The satisfaction of having been able to return to Oaxaca after having skipped the appointment with the land I love for a year is immense. And this brings me back to the enthusiasm of 2019. For this reason I decided to propose a special workshop for February with the occasion of the carnival and to which I hope photographers who want to live a unique human and photographic experience can register. This world is more and more difficult. If you want to immerse yourself in something that will let you know that another world is still possible, it is time to join the experience in Oaxaca with me.
