Day 3

What a productive day!! I met with Eli and have only good excited feelings about my Mexico project. This weekend I will be going to Houston and I will bring my camera in order to put some things up here for us to enjoy together. Eli wants me to look into grants so if anyone has any resource ideas I am open. I am willing to write extensively for grants for this project so that is not a deterrent. I am updating some photos from today that Eli felt especially carried some impact. These are from a different barranca than the others. These are of a woman named Elena's home with her four children. When she was pregnant with the youngest she ran from her husband to start a new life in Cuernavaca. She came from nothing and terror and built her own home with her hands everything you see in the background was constructed by her with little outside help. Her children and her are amazingly close they live in a one room house with a bunk bed that sleeps them all. 

This is just a small taste I am hoping to make these into a complete show. Now that we have finished the first round of edits, on to round two.

This is Elena washing dishes in the sink she made outside from a water basin that she collects water in.

This is the youngest daughter

Eli Reed and I are wrapping up our edits we only have one more edit this week. So far we have about 70 images for final pics. So I will be editing this down again soon. I hope to have a final edit of 40 photos that I will then make a portfolio of. Eli says that I need to look for grants. So I am excited to start getting this rolling.

Heres stuff from yesterday's edit:

Uncle and Niece.
Birthday boy playing with new soccer ball at his party at his mothers house on the tracks.

Same birthday, quiet moment. 

This weekend I am doing a small show at an art party. There will be musicians, athletes artists, it is casual but it is still a small show. I think I am going to print and mat some of Mexico edits as well as some of my older work and just see what people are feeling. 

More Mexico edits, but first I wanted to include some more background. These pictures will mainly be from the neighborhood that the children at Caminando Unidos (the volunteer run school that the previous pictures came from) are living in.

This type of lower class neighborhood is called una barranca in Cuernavaca. This specific barranca is along an old set of train tracks in Cuernavaca. Most of the families that live along these tracks built there houses from scrap metal and found supplies.


There is currently a political battle between the community along the tracks and the state Government. The state government purchased the track land from an independent company. Currently the state is forcing families that are already living meagerly on the fridge of lower class to be moved in order to build high end condos in the place of their shacks and small homes. The conflict arises from a federal law in Mexico that permits unused federal land to be claimed by citizens as long as they are paying bills and have proof of taxes or electricity.

The families I meet are mainly women run households and the community that has been there for more than 40 years is very tight-knit.