captured on memory card

Photo Essay: Oaxaca’s Ethnobotanical Garden

by Ekua on December 18, 2011 · 0 comments in captured on memory card,Mexico,the natural world

Like a plant photography nerd rebel, I snuck into a botanical garden. Except at the time, I didn’t know that I wasn’t supposed to be there. When I walked up to the entrance, there were two security guards chatting away. I made brief eye contact with them and they didn’t say anything so I kept on walking. I walked pass a few people who looked like they worked in the Santo Domingo complex where the garden is located. They also said nothing. So I took out my camera and started taking pictures of a few of the 1,300+ varieties of plants that are housed there.

Then out of nowhere, a woman came into the garden saying I wasn’t allowed in without a tour and I had to leave. Oops. I knew there were free tours of the garden, but I didn’t know that you were required to be on one to go in. But I made the most of my short visit while it lasted:

So much creativity went into the design of the garden.

Love this shot, only wish that the bird hadn’t decided to leave a present on the cactus that it’s perched upon.

Really great placement of a reflecting pool.

In more rural semi arid parts of Mexico, sometimes you’ll see houses with landscaping that include a fence of of cacti like this.

After the woman kicked me out of the garden, I took one last picture of a huge agave plant before I left.

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Photo Essay: The Abandoned Monastery of Cuilapan

by Ekua on December 10, 2011 · 4 comments in captured on memory card,Mexico

Not far from Oaxaca city, in the town of Cuilapan de Guerrero, is a monastery that bears many similarities to the often lively church and monastery of Santo Domingo. But Cuilapan’s Convento de Santiago Apóstol took on very different fate. Before it was finished being built, it was abandoned.

While Cuilapan is now a quiet pastoral town, before and during the colonial era, it was an important settlement. In colonial times, the Spanish started the construction of the monastery there as a place to convert the indigenous Mixtec and Zapotec people of the region.

It became an elaborate, expensive, and of course, exploitative endeavor. The construction of it was halted in the 1570s.  No one is fully sure why, but common ideas are because it violated the Spanish mandate for modesty and authorities stopped it, not enough funds were available to complete it, there were disputes over who should pay for it, or a decline in the indigenous population resulted in fewer hands to build the church. Or maybe some combination of two or more of the above.

What was built of the the formidable Convento de Santiago complex still stands, but time has taken its toll:

Fading murals.

Mexico had a president of African descent almost two hundred years before the United States did. Vincente Guerrero, a man of mixed races, helped liberate Mexico from the Spanish. When he became the second president of Mexico in 1829, he abolished slavery in the country. He was essentially assassinated at the Convento de Santiago less than two years into his presidency. This is a memorial to him.

The stairs have become warped. It’s really easy to trip on them if you’re not paying attention.

The courtyard of the monastery looked almost exactly like Santo Domingo’s, but without upkeep.

A small outdoor section has been turned into a garden.

I’m glad I found my way to the roof where there were beautiful views of Oaxaca’s Valles Central region.

The bucolic surroundings of the church were a nice change of scenery for a day. Here, a barefoot man is herding goats.

The row of arches in the forefront stops abruptly on the left side.

In some parts of the complex, you can see some Mixtec elements incorporated into the design.

A row of arches contrasts with a line of unfinished column bases and creates unintended asymmetry in the roofless basilica.

The entry way to the basilica.

The complex.

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Photo Essay: Scenes from Santo Domingo in Oaxaca

by Ekua on December 2, 2011 · 3 comments in captured on memory card,Mexico

Plaza Santo Domingo is a place where I’ve spent a lot of time in Oaxaca. Like other squares in Latin America, it is a multipurpose space. On a busier day in Plaza Santo Domingo, you might encounter traditional music or a colorful wedding procession performance. On other days, it is a family room, a meeting and hang out spot for friends and families and foreigners.

On many days, it is wonderfully quiet. While Oaxaca’s Zocalo (the main square) is usually buzzing with activity and protests and inspiration, the often quieter Santo Domingo is where I’d go to sit in a perfectly empty square with a notebook and head already brimming with thoughts.

In addition to slow travel days and public celebrations at Santo Domingo, this year I also decided to explore some of it’s cultural offerings:

The facade of Santo Domingo.

Sheet music from Oaxaca’s colonial era inside the Santo Domingo Cultural Center.

On the second floor of the Cultural Center, there are many great view points of the plaza and beyond. On the one side, the windows look out over Oaxaca’s botanical garden.

Detailed painting on the ceiling of the Santo Domingo Cultural Center.

The Santo Domingo Cutural Center is housed in what used to be the church’s monastery. If you visit Oaxaca and you’re interested in the local history, the Cultural Center is where you should begin. There are many rooms full of artfully arranged items from Oaxaca’s history and I spent hours visiting all of them.

The architecture of Santo Domingo is fascinating to me. Over two summers, I’ve taken many many pictures of it and the desert plants that decorate the plaza.

The courtyard in the center of the Santo Domingo Cultural Center.

People preparing for wedding festivities. Weddings at Santo Domingo are a fun affair for anyone who happens to be nearby when they occur. The church remains open during the ceremony and following the ceremony, you might catch a song and dance performance in the square and a procession through town with music and a large paper mache statues.

Elaborate gold leaf detail at the altar inside the Santo Domingo.

The detail on the ceiling inside Santo Domingo is unreal.

Young graduates gathering in the Plaza Santo Domingo for picture taking and socializing.

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A Walk Along the Ruins of an Aqueduct in Oaxaca

by Ekua on November 14, 2011 · 2 comments in captured on memory card,Mexico

On the quiet continuation of a Centro street in Oaxaca, I come across the ruins of an old aqueduct. Weeds spring out of the top of worn brick and stone arches that once carried water from the mountains to the city. Houses are built right up against the aqueduct. I’m not sure how there is room left for it in Oaxaca, but there is even more charm and quaintness in this part of town.

Walking along the aqueduct, for a brief moment I feel like I’m in a previous era. It’s more than the structure’s relic status. There’s the rustic nature of the materials used and the roundness of the arches. These are elements that are often forgone in more modern creations but constitute a kind of beauty that is simple and timeless. The structure is of a period where function and beauty were allowed to intermingle more regularly.

As I continue, I think about the ongoing water shortage in Oaxaca. I wonder what it might have been like to walk along the aqueduct when it was in use, beginning in the mid-1700s and almost 200 years thereafter. I wonder if such visibility of the flow of water makes you think more about its source, how it’s used, and how much of it there is.

I wonder about the people who currently live their lives up against this beautiful relic. Those who walk and drive through the arches daily. I wonder if it’s just a bunch of stone and brick to them or if it’s as gorgeous to them as it is to my unfamiliar eyes. I wonder if everyday they are enchanted by Los Arquitos and tickled when they duck to walk through doors behind arches.

 

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Photo of the Day: Bursting Through the Berlin Wall

by Ekua on November 9, 2011 · 6 comments in captured on memory card,Germany,street art

As I was sifting through photos last night, I came across this shot of one of the coolest murals I saw in the street art-friendly city of Berlin. I spotted it at the East Side Gallery, a long stretch of murals that cover a section of remnants of the Berlin Wall.

The car smashing through the wall is a Trabant, the main vehicle of the German Democratic Republic (the former East Germany). The license place displays the date, November 9, 1989. That was the day the Berlin Wall fell.

I remember that day and the events that followed. I saw images of it on the news. Crowds poured across the border, people partied on top of the wall, and the emotions were intense. I was way too young to have any idea why such a border could exist and what the fall of it really meant, but I knew it was something big.

My young mind also couldn’t have imagined that almost twenty-two years later, I’d find myself standing in some of those same places I saw on the news, now with an understanding of that wall’s significance and a palpable sense of the potency of witnessing and experiencing history.

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