Across Cultures: Looking at Mexico / Mexico looks back

Wednesday 7 February 2024

Looking at Mexico / Mexico looks back

"At the vibrant age of eighty, Sternburg is rewriting the narrative of aging through the lens of her camera", I read and start to smile – these marketing folks surely live in a world of their own! – for vibrant is most definitely not a word I associate with eighty. Janet Sternburg might of course be a very vibrant person (from the few emails I received from her, she surely appears to be) yet this has, I think, less to do with her age than with her personality. Rewrite the narrative of aging? Needless to say, I haven't the foggiest idea what could be meant by this.

The introduction to the book however stands in stark contrast to the language of the marketing world. This is how it starts:

"How, I ask myself, can I make a book of photographs that isn’t only a gringa’s way of looking at Mexico?

This was not a question that occurred to me when I started taking photographs in Mexico twenty-three years ago, a woman in middle age who had come for a week to regain a sense I’d temporarily lost. For a long while I’d been writing a book set in the past. When it was finished and on the way to the publisher, I looked up to discover that I couldn’t see the world in the present, at least not in the acute way of registering color, light, detail, that had once given me so much pleasure. During a week that was to change my life, I went to a town in the Central Highlands, taking long walks every day feeling suspended, finding that without a destination I was more receptive to what was around me."

Especially her last remark on being without a destination caught my attention. Not only because it describes my own way of taking photographs, but also because it describes an attitude of exploration and genuine discovery respectively. What however slightly baffles me is her desire to "make a book of photographs that isn’t only a gringa’s way of looking at Mexico?" First of all: I do not think that such books exist for there is no gringo way of looking at Mexico. Moreover, there is not even an outsider's or an insider's look at Mexico. There is only a personal look at Mexico and that depends on a variety of factors but mostly on character and attitude.

Some years ago, I travelled through parts of Mexico with my then wife, who hails from Havana, Cuba. Her Latin and my Swiss view differed mostly because as a woman who does not look particularly Latin, she often was the subject of not very welcome attention. As she said one day: You know that I like to be whistled after but this here is definitely too much. Apart from that our views were strikingly similar. No wonder, we share the same kind of humour.

I'm a fan of the outside view. I think I've learned more (or more interesting things) about my native Switzerland from curious foreigners. The natives are too close and therefore often do not see anymore the peculiarities of "their" country. Differently put: The likelyhood that a Mexican would have taken the above picture to show me his or her Mexico I consider pretty far-fetched. But then again, and as always, who knows?

Janet Sternburg doesn't elaborate on what she thinks a "not only a gringa's look at Mexico" could be but one might safely conclude that this book is testimony to it. She did it in collaboration with José Alberto Romero Romano who contributed comments to the pctures. There are also pics that come without a comment; no explanation is given. I see them as invitations to let your mind wander and wonder ...

through window after rain

The comments are in English and in Spanish; they describe what there is to see as well as the context, Romero Romano's context, that is. However, José Alberto Romero Romano not only lets us know what he sees in the photographs, he's also doing quite some interpretiing. It goes without saying, we can't do without interpretations although I did not always see what he was seeing. That is hardly surprising yet he has a tendency to read into a picture what is simply not there.

I think this approach pretty unique. The photographer provides the pictures, a friend with similar values interprets them. I can't think of another book like this. Yet, as interesting this approach surely is, it is also somewhat irritating. I would have preferred to also learn about the photographer's view.

"What is the arc of this book? What is its story? Not a linear narrative, because that’s not something I do. My life is as a poet of images and of words. And poetry makes leaps. I want the images to make leaps, but then I have to ask myself what are those leaps implying when they are all together, image after image?", writes Janet Sternburg at the end and then tries to give an answer. An unsatisfying one, as far as I'm concerned; she could have done without it. For to expose yourself to an environment you are fond of and then take pictures of what something inside you inspires you to take doesn't need an explanation.