Making pictures of Guanajuato
24 January 2005
On Saturday, Kelly Hart ventured onto the busy Guanajuato streets with his digital camera. After a while he sat down on a bench near the mercado. Balancing the camera on his lap, he tilted the mirror from a small vanity case at a 45-degree angle to reflect the LCD screen image. Although upside down, he could at least check that the image was more or less framed properly. Some 75 clicks later, Kelly went back home to play with the results. Fifteen of the pictures ended up in this time-lapse Guanajuato street animation. Select the slideshow view (you can control the transition speed).
Individually, they are unremarkable. Just a continuous silent procession of passers-by ‘caught’ going about their business. But the best ’street’ photographs tell some kind of story, and through their fleeting ‘ordinariness’, I think these do. Many of the vital components of street life are present: the main characters are a pair of dreamy-looking ‘Toy Story’ [?] piñatas – but there’s plenty of street chatter, passing buses, a delivery of 5 gallon garrafon jugs of purified water, a fresh-fruit stand, a woman damping down dust from the sidewalk, an ever-present and seemingly abandoned huddle of gas cylinders…
Filed in: Guanajuato, Mexican Life & Society
