Finally got to check "Experience the Day of the Dead in Mexico" off my list of things to do & see. I admit I was discouraged by the amount of photographers there and didn't shoot much of the cemetery rituals, but the city of Oaxaca itself was enough for me. Here are some of my favorites from my digital images (shot with my new at the time Canon G12):
Oaxaca, Mexico
Hiroshi Sugimoto
Sugimoto Copy
My Original
Fidel, Habana, Cuba, 2006In this very personal collection of color photographs by Ivette Spradlin, we travel to the island of Cuba, where the artist visited for the first time in July 2006 with her mother and aunt, both Cuban exiles. Most of the images displayed here, taken mainly in Habana, reflect the artist's intention of documenting not a distinct narrative of her relatives' or other Cubans' lives, but rather the interior and quiet places of their homes and surrounding areas. In the artist's own words, the Grit collection of Cuba images are something of a family photo album, absent her own family in a strictly physical sense. The pictures provoke a mood of small-scale domesticity and family life in the viewer, as if we are about to sit at the table with the Novas family and have some beans and tostones, as in "Comida," or stretch out on a friend's bed for a nap, as in "Fidel." This effect is achieved without the use of cutesiness or sentimentality, however, and also serve to throw in stark relief a sense of Cuba in both collective poverty, and, at times, decrepit isolation.
Ms. Spradlin holds an MFA in Photography, which she received from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and from where she recently returned to Atlanta.
-Betsy Manous
Solita, Calimete, Cuba, 2006
