2017/05/23

Workshop with Mark Alor Powell. 
Merida, Yucatan. First week of December, 2017.

The main plaza in Mérida feels like an exposed bright plane, brushed with a light old dust, over a giant pillar from an ancient city beneath the ground. One feels as if city has been buried over and over and and the surface truly exerts its mysterious impermanence. The sun is strong and the ground hot and dry, it conducts from within and shadows exist like cool inky places where people and strange objects lurk. Guayabera shirts are sold in small stores scattered around the plaza. They are quiet places that have been present for years. Usually an old guy waits behind a counter over colorful tiles and he models the same shirts he sells under vintage glass cases. There is no other city in the world where you need to change your wardrobe as urgently as you do in Merida. You need air to touch and flow towards your armpits and stomach, these shirts are perfectly designed and needed if you want to explore the city with a camera.  

This workshop is designed for exploration, we will be close to the ground and will move and sniff out photographs like hungry stray dogs.  We will make stories and transmissions from experiences within Merida motivated by all possible and unexpected adventures.  We will meet strangers, make photographic notes, appreciate architecture, explore interior gardens, mechanic shops, curbside life on Calle 60, make street portraits and accumulate something with the goal of a final declaration through a series of photographs from each student.