Jorge Santiago

Photographer
focus.jorgesantiagophoto.com
    
Panoramas Oaxaca
Location: Pittsburgh, PA
Nationality: Mexican
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,... MORE
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.

Text by Sarah Menkedick
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