A TRAIL OF MARVELS

A award-winning Texas-based photographer and Rice University professor celebrates Mexico and its spirituality in his latest book.

Winningham made his first proper trip to Mexico in 1983, on the eve of his 40th birthday, calling it a “voyage of personal discovery.” In a little over 100 pages, he enhances dozens of his photographs with anecdotes about his travels, ruminations on mortality, and perspectives on photography as a medium. “I would encounter people—the Mayan people of rural Chiapas, in particular—who refused to be photographed, based on their belief that their soul can be stolen in the act of being photographed….it seems to me that their fear—call it a superstition, or whatever you wish—is not an unreasonable one at all,” he writes. But the photographs, most of them color, are the star, arranged in five parts that center on the Day of the Dead celebrations in different regions; many show religious iconography, including sculptures of Christ, churches, candlelit graveyards, and images of the skulls and flower-filled, colorful processions of Day of the Dead. Others capture the wilderness of Mexico’s landscape, and activities of everyday life. The photos aren’t dated, but Winningham writes of the mid-80s and 90s as his love for Mexico deepened, drinking mezcal with families he met and gaining a new concept of time: “Time moves only like the oceans move, in waves, in tides, and in currents, staying within its given space. Time cannot move, because time is space.” The last section honors Winningham’s relationship with the González family, who provide a more intimate, human context for rituals and celebrations. At times, Winningham’s writing has an air of Eurocentrism; at one point, he reduces the legacy of imperialism and genocide to a matter of how “European technology, mental flexibility, and faith in divine destiny prevailed over inferior weaponry and mystical fatalism.” Overall, however, this is a memorable book from a photographer whose work appears in major collections nationwide, including those of the Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art.

A thoughtful collection of images of and commentary on Mexico and its people.