Potter of Santa Maria Atzompa: Irma Claudia Garcia Blanco
The daughter of Teodora Blanco squats on her knees at the small potter’s wheel as if in prayer at an altar holding an offering. Her legs are tucked neatly under her. She is dressed in embroidered white cotton, white on white. Behind her is a gray stucco wall. She is framed in the expanse of […]
Monte Alban: Closer to the Gods
Atop the Zapotec world and about 15 minutes from the historic center of Oaxaca is the great Meso-american archeological site of Monte Alban, named by the Spaniards after siting the mountaintop covered with the blooms of the white morning-glory tree (left photo below). The Spanish Conquistadores named Oaxaca for the plant, called in Nahuatl […]
Photo Diaries: Blending Photography and Prose
What is photojournalism? Our workshop instructor June Finfer, Chicago documentary filmmaker/photographer/playwright explains it this way: It is making a picture, capturing the connection, creating something out of what you are feeling as you go beyond the surface of what you see. Our charge this week is to make photographs and then write about impressions that […]
Portraits of Las Cuevitas: Caves of Teotitlan del Valle, Oaxaca
After an incredible meal of sopa de verduras (vegetable soup) seasoned with hierba santa (a green leaf with a faint scent of licorice), mole negro (black spicy chocolate sauce) with chicken, traditional tamales stuffed with chicken and mole amarillo (red-orange spicy sauce made with chiles, corn paste [masa], and chicken stock), we piled into two […]