Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => User Critiques => Topic started by: Geoffrey James on March 16, 2017, 03:51:59 pm
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Made with a Leica Q -- an amazing Mezo-American site near the city of Oaxaca,
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Spooky, the shot makes me feel uncomfortably at home there.
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My first reaction was uninteresting but after a while, my interest picked up and there's a strange atmosphere in this shot.
In the end, I like it.
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My first reaction was uninteresting but after a while, my interest picked up and there's a strange atmosphere in this shot.
In the end, I like it.
Agreed.
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Yes, it grows on me.
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To get it to "grow" on you even more, read Bernal Diaz's The True History of the Conquest of New Spain, and Emma Lindsay Squier's The Bride of the Sacred Well.
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Russ, you are so right. The moment you spend time in a place like Oaxaca, you feel the layers and complexity of history, as well as the brutality of the conquest. At Mitla, another ancient site, the Dominicans built their church on the ruins of the civilization they were trying to destroy. Monte Alban is one of the most spectacular sites I have ever seen. It is not so much a city as a giant stage-set built on the top of a flattened mountain. The carving and jewelry and pottery that has been discovered shows a highly sophisticated, if cruel society. I for one am definitely going back.
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Wish I could go, Goeffrey. I've been enchanted by the history of the Spanish invasion and of the Maya since I was a kid. Now I'm too old to make the trip.
Really appreciate your picture.
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Russ, You feel like you are on top of the world. I am 75 and still traveling. The worst part are the airports.
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Well, I turned 87 two days ago, and the airports always have been the worst part. I flew military aircraft for ten years and never could get used to traveling on civilian aircraft.
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Oh wow. Russ, you are allowed to stay at home. With books you can always travel in the mind. And I have always loved the saying 'it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive.'In Oaxaca, I was bowled over by the people, who greet you in the street, and who have a real sense of their history. Seventy percent of the land in the state is owned by the native people -- I think there are 16 languages and they make amazing stuff. Here is a picture of young girls of the Triqui people, who had come to town to protest the encroachments on their land by, I am ashamed to say, Canadian mining companies. It is just after the march and having got up in the middle of the night, they have organized lunch, with a big layer of tacos around fried pork rind and a whole cilantro plant. Don't get me going on this -- i will get boring. And I am making some effort not to be political, which does not belong here.