The street scenes in and around San Miguel have drawn artists, painters, and photographers for generations. It’s part of the draw. These visual seductions are around any corner everywhere, and after a while, you can get overwhelmed with it. Even though you never tire of the views, with so much tugging on your coat at the same time, it’s easy to look at something and never see it. After 50 some odd years of shooting images commercially, I remain amazed at how easy it is to look right at it, sometimes repeatedly, and still not really see it clearly. It happens to me all the time, and I imagine it will never stop. One of the glorious frailties of being human. It’s one thing to spiritually claim we live only in the current moment but being aware enough in that same moment to see the obvious is something else entirely. For me, the obvious is often the most elusive moment, and often enough, the most critical.
For instance, this street right next to our house. I’ve either walked by or driven by this scene every day for almost three years and until a couple of days ago I never really saw it. Not once. I thought I did, but I didn’t. How do you manage to do that? You’d think it would be obvious. You’d think it would.
This time of year brings out the bougainvillea all over San Miguel, but it wasn’t the flowers that finally caught my attention here. Bougainvillea is everywhere - flowers are the backdrop to San Miguel, and backdrops can distract from things, like the lady in the wall. I never acknowledged her. Maybe the quality of the light on the lady in the wall always hid her from my view. I don’t know. For three years I drove right by until I drove by one morning last week. I glanced in the rear-view mirror as I passed and suddenly, something grabbed me, and I pulled the car over. I looked closer, and then I saw her. She had always been there, but with everything else going on in my life I did not see her.
The exterior walls in San Miguel are known to hide wonderous things. You can never tell what’s behind the walls. Often the boring walls hide a beautiful garden. This yellow wall hides from view a deserted house in our neighborhood. We’ve never seen anyone on the property or parked out front - it’s a ghost house behind tall walls. The property is overgrown, empty, and hidden. Nobody knows anything about the history or who owns it, and nobody knows the lady in the wall. I’ve never seen anything like her anywhere in Mexico. Maybe she used to live in the house. Maybe she’s a symbol of some unrequited somebody. Maybe she was or is or might or might not be. Nobody knows. But as I stood there looking at her image frozen in the stone, behind the razor-sharp points of a wrought-iron gate, meant to forever keep her in her place, I saw a pose almost reminiscent of the famous Rita Hayworth pin-up poster in 1941 - something almost angelic and peaceful in her eyes. The wall faces east. The high desert in San Miguel can be harsh and in the four-month rainy season, the deluge hits her in the face. In spite of it all, she appears at ease. In 2022, I find myself a little jealous. I do.
This time maybe, the light was right, the shadows were right, the flowers were right, and the time was right for me to see all this reflected in the rear-view mirror. Often, in order to make sense, things have to be lined up in a certain contextual order. For me, when things fall together like this, I often see stories as well, and just as often I see reflections in the stories.
I reflect back over the years, to all those obvious good or bad things I never saw, or never saw coming, and all the while they were right in front of me. Sometimes you don’t have enough context to see what you’re looking at - you need that missing reference point so you can understand. Sometimes, you’re just not prepared enough yet to see the obvious when it appears - nobody’s fault - you’re just not ready for it. Sometimes you’re just too busy or not busy enough to see it. Sometimes you’re just too damn smart to see anything that’s obvious in the moment, and truth be told, sometimes you’re just too damn dumb at that same moment. And thank God, occasionally, you catch a break, do yourself a favor, and the obvious becomes clear. Sometimes your life is never quite the same, and that’s a moment of clarity worth living for.
I don’t see this as a particularly stunning photo. Not breaking any new ground here. I think it’s actually a rather obvious choice for any photographer. But for me, in this new year’s moment, the lady in the wall behind the wrought iron gate speaks. The message is one of hope. A hope that in this new year every one of us will have the common sense to give the obvious good stuff a fair chance to be seen, and if in a moment it becomes clear, the grace to accept it into our lives, and the wisdom to let it prosper. Happy new year folks. Together, let's begin again.
0 Comments