Friends and Strangers

Yesterday was Ned's second chemo treatment. All those little bags on the left are dripping "stuff" that help with the side effects of chemo and so far they seem to be working very well.

We are so fortunate to have family and so many friends who are surrounding us with attention. We have received phone calls and emails from friends and co-workers from years ago. We are being entertained with dinners. A friend and I went to lunch yesterday and then she came back to the doctor's office and sat with me while Ned was getting chemo. Between the medical treatment schedule and our social schedule we certainly don't have time to be bored.

But what amazes me is how many people we don't know have also rallied around us. So many of you blog readers that I haven't met have sent best wishes both on the blog and by email. Everyone of them is appreciated. CH, one of the blog readers here in Houston has offered to help in any way she can. She lives in the area of town where we owned a home and we have now met face to face over a cup of coffee.

This is a story about the kindness of a stranger that came out of the blue but meant so much to me when it happened. We thought that Ned's cancer could be removed with surgery and we would be able to move on. Over and done with. We checked into the hospital early one morning for the surgery with high hopes.

After Ned was taken off to surgery I was in the surgical waiting room. In the room was a woman with her feet pulled up in the chair and wrapped in a blanket dozing. She woke and folded her banket. We talked a bit like you do in waiting rooms and I learned that her husband had had three major surgeries that week because of complications.

Later that morning when the surgeon came out to tell me that he wasn't able to do the surgery as planned, I'm sure she could see the concern and sadness in my face. An hour or two later, she walked by and handed me an tiny yellow sack. She patted my shoulder and said, "Here is a little gift." On the sack was written, "I just met you but I was led to get this for you. Remember, regardless of the news the doctors give, our Great Physician is in control. Marty" Inside the sack in yellow tissue paper was a silver-dollar-sized coin that had a Biblical inspired saying on it. I was so touched. The little coin is of little material value but her kindness was golden.

I really don't know how to say Thank You to all our friends and to all the strangers who have been so supportive to us except to say, "Thank You."

One Opinion

You can't please everyone. This happened while I was photographing one of the Palm Sunday processions this morning. I don't think she was really sticking her tongue out at me. It was just one of those split-seconds for facial expressions and now I have it on film (uhhh....a digital file.) I love this picture.

Primavera

Spring has officially come to San Miguel. How do I know? Because the Calles and Jardin were filled with bumblebees and butterflies. There were also a lot of baby animals as well Tinker Bells and mermaids. All the Kinder and maybe first and second grade school children dress up in costumes and parade through town to let us know what time of year it is. Some classes have a theme and all of the children in that class would be lions or deer or whatever.
The costumes are made by Mom and they are precious. All I can think of when I see the boys is that we'd have to drug my grandsons before they would be a bumblebee. But these kids really get into it. Wearing costumes and parading through town is just part of the Mexican culture. Even some of the baby brothers and sisters, too young for school, were dressed in costumes to watch their older siblings pass by in the parade.

I know that these two pictures catch these children looking tired. I tried to photograph them where they were forming up the parade. That usually works pretty well to get some individual portraits of the participants. Not this time. It was a mad house where they were lining up. Mothers, brothers and sisters, teachers, bumblebees and Tinker Bells were on a mission. There were way too many people in too small a space trying to get to their assigned space at the last minute. I decided to get out of the way in a hurry.

It was a fairly long way for the little guys to walk. They lined up on the other side of Calzada de la Luz and came in Hidalgo, up Insurgentes, back over and down San Francisco to the Parroquia. There was a truck ever so often in the parade and when one of the little tiny guys got tired and had a few tears they'd load them on the truck to finish up the parade.

The rest of you may have to wait another day or so for Spring but Primavera came to San Miguel this morning.

Opportunity Almost Missed

Sometimes I miss opportunity when it knocks. This time it knocked twice and fortunately I took it on the second knock. I was with friends and we were walking through the market. I saw this little girl surrounded by these lush colors but studiously working in her book. I was in the middle of the group and I hesitated to stop and walked on by. Tom was a little behind me and he caught up with me and said, "Take a picture of this little girl." Boing! He was right. I took this one, another one and then she looked up.

Thanks Tom for giving me a second opportunity.

Lost in the Yucatan

This is a portrait that I made of Don Miguel and his family in 1995. We met Don Miguel on one of our visits to the Yucatan in a tiny village just outside of Merida on the libre road between Merida and Cancun in maybe 1992 or 1993.

On the right-hand side of the road I saw a tiny church so of course we pulled off the road and bounced over the rutted path back to the church. It looked well tended while the hacienda ruins behind it did not. We got out of the car and walked past the dogs and chickens and into the little church which was little more than a chapel and then back out again and over to the ruins of the hacienda. It was a small hacienda with some portals. Most of the roof was missing but you could still see some of the "wall-paper-like" painting on the walls. I took some pictures of the hacienda. When we came back to the front of the hacienda we realized that there was henequen drying on lines strung across a field and then a shed where some men were tying and stacking the henequen.

We went back into the church and there was a man cleaning up in the church. Ned asked him if I could make some pictures in the church and he said yes. My camera was on the tripod and I shot some images and then we asked him if I could make a picture of him.

Over the next few years we stopped several times in this village and visited with Don Miguel and his family. One year they invited us to have comida with them during Day of the Dead. What I'm telling you is that we knew this village but on our recent trip to the Yucatan we could not find it. It was so small that it was not on any map. It was just a few houses on the side of the road where the hacienda was and a few more on the other side of the libre road. I don't think we ever even saw a name for the village. Still we knew it was between Kanasin and another small village that started with Pech??? and we found that village but not Don Miguel's village.

Everywhere we went in the Yucatan there has been so much widening of roads, building new roads, changing access roads that we were disoriented much of the time. In Tizimin, in Ticul, in Valladolid large parts of the town were torn up as new utility lines were being laid and new roads built. The old two narrow lane libre roads were widened and tied in to cuota roads. Overpasses were built to cross over the highways. And somewhere in these civic improvement projects Don Miguel and his village were lost in the Yucatan.

Blogging Connections

We're back from our trip to the Yucatan. What a great time we had and one of the highlights was getting together with some of the bloggers from that part of the world. Debi arranged for dinner at Restaurante Reforma which had great food and just the right casual atmosphere. Right after we arrived I held the camera overhead and snapped the group. So let me introduce you....

From the left, Ned, he looks blurry but he hadn't even had a beer, Jonna, Tom who belongs to Debi wasn't really laying on the table he was just trying to get in the picture, Debi, Mimi, Theresa, Duke and Wayne. Click on the links to check out the blogs.

I wish we would have had more time to visit. I was at the end of the table with Wayne and Jonna and so I didn't get much time with the other end of the table. Still this meeting reminded me of how well you get to know people from their blogs and before that I was part of a photography group that still is together after at least 15 years. The photography group has had a number of meetings and it is always like you just pick up where you left off the day before with a conversation.

I already really, really liked each of their blogs but now reading them will mean even more.

Remembering Mariana Yampolsky

A Mexican from Uruapan who sometimes comments on my Flickr site wrote, "Your photos remind me of Mariana Yampolsky´s." When I read that my heart skipped a beat. Such a wonderful compliment but it also brought back some special memories.

Many years ago when someone from Mexico was reviewing my portfolio, she said, "Your work reminds me of Mariana Yampolsky. She lives in Mexico City. You really should look her up the next time you are there. I think you two would have a lot to talk about." And that is what I did.

I was able to get her telephone number and so before I left Texas, I called to ask if she might have time to meet me. She was delightful and invited us to dinner in her home. I asked if there was anything she needed and she asked if I could bring her some photographic paper. Mexico was in the middle of a peso devaluation and she wasn't able to buy paper at that time but she needed some for a show she was printing. I took her some paper. She and her husband were so gracious to us and we had a lovely dinner. She asked me how much she owed me for the paper and I said that she did not need to pay me but if she had a work print that she could give me I'd love to have a piece of her work. She opened her flat files and gave me a print and then she casually mentioned that the Museum of Modern Art in NYC had recently purchased this same print for their permanent collection. I saw Mariana Yampolsky several time after that and she always remembered me and was so gracious.

Now I don't think my work holds a candle to Mariana's body of work in Mexico and yet I felt that we did have a kindred spirit in the way we approached light and the way we both loved the commonplace of Mexican life. So you can see why my heart skipped a beat when I read the comment on Flickr.

Mariana Yampolsky was from Chicago but in the 1940's she moved to Mexico and in the 1950's she became a Mexican citizen. Originally she was a printmaker but in the late 1940's she took up photography. Mariana was very much a part of the artistic and photographic community in Mexico. She was in many exhibitions around the world. Several monographs of her work have been published and she is included in many other photography books about Mexico. The monograph I like best was published by the University of Texas Press, The Edge of Time. Mariana died May 3, 2002.

Archive #14

I've been working on a project and have not been able to focus on the blog but I thought I'd post another archive image. This is another from a small village outside of Oaxaca.

Archive #11

Yesterday I was looking back in my old negatives. I had an inquiry from a design firm about using some of my images for one of their projects. It doesn't look like it is going to work out for a number of reasons. This isn't one of the images that they inquired about but while I was looking I saw this one and it brought back a day of wonderful memories from a two-week workshop I took in Oaxaca in the summer of 1994.

Time Sorts Things Out

When I first bring in images and upload them to the computer or scan holga negatives, I always label or mark a bunch of them that I want to process. Since August I've gotten behind in processing them. So much has happened.....Guatemala, Texas, Mexican Independence Day, the San Miguel festival, and now Day of the Dead in Michoacan. Lots of Gigbytes of stuff. I haven't worked on many of them so today I was looking back through these folders and the labels on the ones I want to process was reduced. Once I get away from the excitement of the event and I can look at the file more objectively, it is easier to discard the almost-but-not-quite-good-enough image. This is a good thing but it is a little depressing too. So many don't stand the test of a little time. Why do I shoot so many almost-but-not-quite-good enough images?

This beautiful lady was just coming into the cemetery in Ihuatzio.

Take My Picture

Early last Sunday morning I was in Austin wandering around the Capitol taking pictures with the Holga lens on my DSLR. There were some runners out and about, just a few tourist staring up at the Capitol and over on Congress Street (Avenue? not sure which one) there were some homeless people. They were sitting on benches facing the sun, going through the trash cans or just standing around. This man was watching me photograph and when I got to where he was sitting, he said, "Take my picture." I took it and he wanted to see the picture. I showed it to him, and he said, "Thank you." I smiled at him and said, "I'll see ya later" and I moved on down the street.

Why didn't I sit down and talk with him? This has bothered me ever since I downloaded and looked at the digital files.

Shy

This little boy was running with the boys around the centro in Hoctun, Yucatan. He was so shy that I think this is the only image I got of him actually looking at me. The look only lasted a fleeting second. This image was made about this time of year in 1994, 14 years ago. I wonder what he is doing now. I wonder if he is still as shy.

One Second Exposures

I've been looking back at portraits I've made in the past. Some of my favorites are from the Yucatan. Medium format camera, Tri-X black and white film, tripod.....and a relatively slow shutter speed. Maybe 1 second. Just think how many 1/500th or 1/250th or even 1/125th of a second you can put in 1 whole second. A one second shutter speed is slow when you compare it like that. And at one second you need that tripod so things stay sharp.

Do you get more of the essence of a person at one second than you do at 1/500th of a second? Someone will probably say that a well exposed negative is a well exposed negative (or digital file) It doesn't matter if it is 1/500 or one second if it is the right combination of ISO to Shutter Speed to Aperture. I understand that is true from a factual standpoint but I don't think it works that way for me.

Logical or not, I think that working with a tripod and with longer exposures means that I have more "essence" of the person in my picture. It means I have made contact with them and they are willing to share something about themselves with me.

El Cafe

I walked past the little coffee shop near the Instituto. She was alone, no customers. I had the camera on my shoulder. I turned around and walked back and asked if I could take a photograph. She said okay.

Maria's Beauty Shop

The shop sits on the corner of Orizaba and Refugio with big double doors open on Orizaba to catch the breeze from the North. It is tiled in white with heavy chrome beauty salon chairs upholstered in red. These chairs are from the 1950s. They line one side of the room.

For a while the shop was on my street just a few doors up the street from me. But about a month ago it moved to its new and prime location facing a busy street. While it was still on my street I had stopped in to have a pedicure late one afternoon. The young woman who gave me the pedicure couldn't speak English and so our conversation was limited because of my poor Spanish but I did find out that she was from the campo and that her father and brothers and one sister were in Mississippi working. She thought that she might go there someday too. Yesterday I stopped and made an appointment for today.

Today only Maria, the shop's owner, was working and so she did my pedicure. Maria lived in Los Angeles for a while and she spoke some English and I spoke some Spanish and so we had one of those weird conversations where both languages were mutilated but somehow we communicated. I'm not sure how long Maria lived in Los Angeles but her husband retired after working for one company for 40 years. She had worked in a beauty shop in the States and talked about beauty shops being licensed. I'm not sure what she did in the beauty shop but she has some experience. She is proud of her shop and told me that she brought the chairs for the shop from the United States.

Maria has seven children, six boys and one daughter. The daughter is a doctor with the Mexican social security system in San Miguel and she is what brought them to San Miguel to live. But as kids do, the daughter recently had to move to Leon for her job. One son was born in the United States and is in college in California. At this point, he doesn't want to live in Mexico. The other sons are scattered in Mexico and the United States. Maria and her husband live in our Colonia. I asked her if her husband was working here in Mexico and she said no, that now he was retired he like to read.....well who can't relate to that.

Maria asked me if I liked living in San Miguel and if I missed Texas. When I asked her the same questions, her answers were a little tentative. She said she had only been here for five months but she was getting use to it.

My friend Marcia walked by and stopped to talk while my toes were getting "done." Before I left, someone stopped in for a manicure and then someone else came in and asked Maria a question which I didn't understand, but he sat down to wait until she was through with the manicure. I think her shop is going to do okay.

I love using the shops and tiendas in our Colonia. I don't know of any other Colonia in San Miguel that has such a wonderful neighborhood feeling. Barber shop, paper store, tienda, restaurant, pizza shop, taco stands, internet cafes, bakery, tortilleros, meat markets.....they are all right here. And now a Beauty Salon.....right on the corner.