invited guest: Francisco Mata Rosas

México Tenochtitlán
Throughout the years, I’ve often discovered existing parallels between traditional festivals and daily life in Mexico City, I’ve noticed the relation between political acts and religious expressions. I’ve linked urban landscapes with feelings, have found explanations for what is collective within the individual and I tried to understand the internal mechanism that allows for co-existence in this city, and I claimed something that already belonged to me, a sense of humor and irony that are part of our reality.

In these neighborhoods, in these festivities, in these streets, I often ran into what I had already seen; and within the visual disorder and chaos I recognized pre-hispanic, colonial, and contemporary art, one only has to separate them. I almost always felt limited by the medium that I had chosen, photography, but on the other hand I recognized its qualities of synthesis, dramatization and, above all, metaphor.













Additionally, I understood that the city is too vast to be contained or photographed in its totality. When this certainty became part of my work, my angst and aspirations diminished, I no longer wanted to document extensively the traditions, I was no longer concerned with offering a definitive testament about Mexico City at the very end of the 20^th Century, and I only wanted to be there, be part of the cycles, to confirm my pleasure in chaos and order that are created during the festival days, of the truces agreed on between tough neighborhoods and, above all, I only wanted to do my job well, take photographs for me, for my wife, my family and my friends


All text and photos © 2008 Francisco Mata Rosas.

Francisco Mata Rosas, is one of Mexico’s most prestigious photographers and has gained broad international recognition for his images, which are tough, sensitive, and thought-provoking.

Recently, as an invited guest, Francisco’s outstanding work done in Cuba was presented on the F Blog. It is a pleasure to invite Francisco for a return visit in order to present his images taken in Mexico City. The images depict the simultaneity of ancient cultural practices and the post-industrial reality of daily life.

You can see FMR’s Cuban images and his resume/exhibition history here. And to see more images from México Tenochtitlán:

Invited by Bea Rowland