The Expatriate Series: The Stranger
I call Paul Strand the stranger because he arrived in Ghana and Mexico as an outsider. He photographed the people of Ghana and Mexico with a simple premise, that the similarities between all humans outweighed any differences. It was this humanism that allowed Paul Strand to capture images that transcended cultural spheres and contributed to lasting impact on the craft of modern photography.
Redes (1936) was a feature film photographed by Paul Stand. It was released as The Wave in the United States to great praise. The film followed a young fisherman forced to organize his townsmen agains the exploitation by wealth hacienda owners and entrenched political interests.
The sea was a reoccurring motif in Strands photography. The two photographs above depict the way Mexicans and Ghanaians make a living off the sea. It is not hard to imagine that the enslaved africans who were brought over to the Mexican coast would also be fishing with Mexico’s indigenous population. The mexican photograph has one solitary figure dwarfed under the long stretch of nets. Almost void of people, the photographs suggests a lack of life when the nets are out of the water. In the Ghana portrait, we see two men mending nets unaware of the camera.
Paul Strand was in Mexico and Ghana at pivotal moments in each nation’s history. Strand visited Mexico in the years following the Mexican Revolution, often journeying to parts still in active combat with the State. In Ghana, Strand arrived at the request of President Kwame Nkrumah during the euphoric post independence years.
The portraits of the two young men depicted above evoke a spirit of dignity and strength associated with the new regimes being established in each nation. The young Ghanaian’s powerful frame and the soiled hands and shirt of the Mexican boy allude to the physical labor that is a part of their daily reality. Yet the way the light surrounds their faces and focuses on their gaze, lifted upward, fills each photograph with a sense of hope.
The Expatriate Series - Introduction
I started the BlackMexico blog to create a public space where I could explore and collaborate on the topic of race and culture in Mexico. I wanted to focus on answering the question of how did the encounter between the people of Mexico and Black diaspora influence the development of the Mexican culture we see today? It was a topic that sparked my interest ever since my senior year of undergraduate study at Cornell University. Now that I created the BlackMexico blog, I have been wrestling with how to engage the material and how to present it on the web. My question is broad and the resources available to me scarce.
(Portrait of young Paul Strand by Alfred Stieglitz)
AfroMexican women standing in front the Hotel Marin in the town of El Ciruelo, Oaxaca
(via neoafrican)
Today In Latin American History
Mexican revolutionary Pascual Orozco, who worked with Francisco I. Madero during the initial stages of the Mexican Revolution before throwing his support behind the government of Victoriano Huerta, was gunned down near El Paso, Texas on August 30th, 1915.
(via fylatinamericanhistory)
Celia Cruz with La Sonora Matancera, Cuba’s most popular orchestra, in the 1950s. Ms. Cruz was the lead singer of the group and eventually married the trumpet player from the group, Pedro Knight. Photo by Narcy Studios, Cuba, courtesy of Omer-Pardillo Cid.
(via fylatinamericanhistory)
Black music in Praise of Oxala and Other Gods
Throughout South America, the descendants of the millions of slaves brought to the New World by the Spanish and Portuguese still pay homage to the pantheon of their African ancestors, often, albeit, under the identities of Christian saints. This album features their vibrant worship music, drawn from recordings made in Colombia, Ecuador, and Brazil. Musicologist David Lewiston recalls his travels through South America to record this music:
