Beyond the celebrations of street parades and the cleaning of gravesites to honor the ancestors, mystery abounds in Oaxaca. The Day of the Dead marks the high point of that mystery but even in the quietest moments and corners of the street, mystery is thick in the air of this beautiful small city and this is what we intend to include in our search for the mystery of all things.  We can find it in the parades, in people dressing up in costumes ranging from devils to angels, in the cemeteries that suddenly bloom with life, in the altars that families build in their homes to remember those who have passed. But mystery can also be found in the shadow of the night, the way the light explodes into a  certain window in the mornings, at the bus station, in an old man spending his days sitting on the bench in the main square, in portraits of people  whose lives are lived in secrecy, or the mysterious beauty of the Mexican people.  We will brainstorm about what you can photograph during this week to match your goals.  This week is about finding and encouraging your own visual voice.

The workshop is not only about finding and identifying mystery during one of the most mysterious and beautiful celebrations of life and death, but it is also about busting out, breaking rules, being wild at heart, and discovering things about ourselves.  Based on my Guggenheim-awarded Secret Garden of Lily La Palma, this is about being in a safe place where you can go wild with photography, reignite your love for it, reinvent yourself.

We have contacts throughout the community and can introduce you to these places and people. We will also visit families who build altars in their homes as well as the cemeteries where people clean and decorate the gravesites of loved ones before the Día de Los Muertos on Nov. 1 and 2.  Shooting time will be coupled with class time and daily one-on-one meetings with Maggie.  This is not your run-of-the-mill workshop where you just cover the same things anyone can photograph or are required to shoot in a particular way.

On the first day of class we will drive head first into brainstorming about ideas you want to work on. We will look at examples of how mystery is used as a major component in photography for inspiration and how you can find that in Oaxaca. You can start a new project during this week or continue to work on a project that you bring with you.

My goal in teaching this workshop is open a door that can liberate you as a photographer and freee you up from the rules imposed by others in terms of what photography should be. Our goal is visual liberation and making sure that you, the participant, leave Oaxaca with something you didn’t have before and which can have a long-term impact on your photography.