“I have for some time now been haunted by the Saami people’s vision of the underworld, as a perfect inversion of the human realm, with the ground always the mirror line, such that the feet of the dead, who walk upside down, touch those of the living, who stand upright.
The intimacy of that posture is moving to me - the dead and the living standing sole to sole… and seeing photos of the early hand marks left on cave walls… I imagine laying my own palm precisely against the outline left by those unknown makers. I imagine too, feeling a warm hand pressing through from within the cold rock, meeting mine fingertip to fingertip, in open-handed encounter across time.”
Dia de Muertos
In 2019, I traveled to Oaxaca, Mexico to photograph All Souls Day rituals and celebrations in several small villages outside the city.
For most of my adult life I have been entranced by the concept of Dia de Muertos - that merely a breath separates life and death, and that the veil between us and the beloveds we have lost dissolves for one night, as we celebrate them with flowers, candles and memories.
But I did not imagine what it would feel like to be welcomed by so many families on this sacred night - children honoring a grandfather with tiny birthday candles across his grave; a mother introducing her newborn to a father who has passed away; two young brothers meticulously arranging marigold petals around their uncle’s headstone; a young woman with her face painted in the traditional skull motif, faithfully tending a family tomb.
It’s impossible to describe the aura of communal joy and celebration that pervades Dia de Muertos as it is solemnly observed in such places; I leave that to the photographs.
