Biography:
Born in Guelatao de Juarez, Oaxaca Mexico, Jorge Santiago is a documentary photographer currently based in Pittsburgh, PA. His work has been exhibited in Mexico City, Los Angeles, Madrid, Havana and Bratislava. He has taught workshops in basic,...
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Focus:Photographer, Photography, Photo Shoots, Translator, Wedding Photographer, Still Photographer
"Jinetes en Oaxaca" is a Hasselblad Xpan film photograph of rodeo riders, or "jinetes," riding their horses during a village fiesta in Matadamas Etla Oaxaca. February 2016
El Cerro del Zempoaltépetl, is the sacred mountain of the Mixe region in Oaxaca. The Mixe people climb this mountain everyday, carrying chickens, roosters, guajolotes (turkeys) and mezcal to ask the mountain for good fortune and favors. They sacrifice the animals there, but they carry the meat back to town for a feast. The day we climbed we where lucky enough to run into a big group of around 60 topiles (policemen) from the village of Santa Maria Tlahuitoltepec, who have climbed the mountain to ask for guidance and good luck for their year in service. One by one the topil and his/her family would go to the altar to prey and, in a striking ritual, sacrifice their animals. It was incredible to watch how connected these people were to the animals. Most of them had only had them for a week or so, but it already seemed they had a deep connection. While they were waiting for their turn to sacrifice the animals, most of them were waiting patiently with the roosters on their heads. Cerro sagrado del Zempoaltépetl. Oaxaca. March 2020
El Cerro del Zempoaltépetl, is the sacred mountain of the Mixe region in Oaxaca. The Mixe people climb this mountain everyday, carrying chickens, roosters, guajolotes (turkeys) and mezcal to ask the mountain for good fortune and favors. They sacrifice the animals there, but they carry the meat back to town for a feast. The day we climbed we where lucky enough to run into a big group of around 60 topiles (policemen) from the village of Santa Maria Tlahuitoltepec, who have climbed the mountain to ask for guidance and good luck for their year in service. One by one the topil and his/her family would go to the altar to prey and, in a striking ritual, sacrifice their animals. It was incredible to watch how connected these people were to the animals. Most of them had only had them for a week or so, but it already seemed they had a deep connection. While they were waiting for their turn to sacrifice the animals, most of them were waiting patiently with the roosters on their heads. Cerro sagrado del Zempoaltépetl. Oaxaca. March 2020
El Cerro del Zempoaltépetl, is the sacred mountain of the Mixe region in Oaxaca. The Mixe people climb this mountain everyday, carrying chickens, roosters, guajolotes (turkeys) and mezcal to ask the mountain for good fortune and favors. They sacrifice the animals there, but they carry the meat back to town for a feast. The day we climbed we where lucky enough to run into a big group of around 60 topiles (policemen) from the village of Santa Maria Tlahuitoltepec, who have climbed the mountain to ask for guidance and good luck for their year in service. One by one the topil and his/her family would go to the altar to prey and, in a striking ritual, sacrifice their animals. It was incredible to watch how connected these people were to the animals. Most of them had only had them for a week or so, but it already seemed they had a deep connection. While they were waiting for their turn to sacrifice the animals, most of them were waiting patiently with the roosters on their heads. March 2020.
Carnaval in San Martin Tilcajete using a Hasselblad Xpan for black and white panoramic photos. February 2015
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Private Story
Panoramas Oaxaca
Copyright
Jorge Santiago
2024
Updated Jun 2023
When Jorge returns to Mexico from the U.S., he may say he is craving something specific: sun, or tlayudas, or the gut-punch scent of cempazuchitl as it is harvested just before the day of the dead. But in fact I think he is craving something much larger: the sense of life in all of its intensity, immensity, and complexity, life in its full exquisite and absurd panorama. His Xpan photo series is a stunning, almost painful reflection of this craving. The Xpan’s panoramic format allows Jorge to capture not only the geographical landscapes of Mexico – the crenelated mountains extending on and on under a huge, hot sky – but the emotional and cultural ones as well: the demons of carnival with their grotesque otherworldly grins haunting ordinary pueblo streets; the ancient intimacy between villagers and the land that sustains them, reflected in ritual sacrifice; the stoic patience and command of the herder, leading his goats to water; the reverence of carefully enacted rituals, in which the veil between this world and the next grows thin. In each panorama, a complex story of vulnerability, intimacy, relationship, in each a reflection of this absurd flicker of time between birth and death that we are lucky enough to inhabit. It is possible to read each photo as a life: the dark edges, the light in the middle filled with the granular heartbreaking detail of playfulness, suffering, work, devotion, performance, stillness, silliness, beauty – and beyond the frame, the quiet rooms, the streets, the landscapes we cannot know.