Mexico Revisited

Mexico Revisited

It was in the early 90's that Pedro wrote to me. I had only heard of this famous Mexican photographer, a pioneer of digital photography and author of the first photo essay on CD ROM, "I Photograph to Remember". It was a gentle, intimate and deeply perceptive essay on the last days of his parents, who were dying of cancer. I remember the image of his father looking as if he could fly. He was then bringing out his new CD, "Truths and Fiction" and wanted me to write an introductory text, something about my responses to the new digital technology. We didn't have email then, and faxes were expensive, but nevertheless we began a dialogue that continued on far beyond the CD, or his subsequent books.

My first opportunity to visit Mexico came in 1996, when the Centro de la Imagen invited me to speak at FotoSeptiembre. As is still the case now, there was no Mexican embassy in Dhaka. Even the foreign secretary--a good friend--was unable to extract a visa application form from the nearest embassy in Delhi, let alone a visa itself. So I fell back on Plan B. I flew to London. The consul general at the Mexican embassy there had heard of me and wanted to help. We exchanged phone numbers as I then flew off to Fotokina in Cologne, loathe to hang around in London while the bureaucrats decided what to do with me. The good consul phoned me in Cologne, and asked me to take the night train from Germany in order to arrive in time. Groggily, I made my way from Waterloo station to the consul office. True to his word, he had wrangled a visa. Just in time for me to race to Heathrow and catch my flight to New York and on to Mexico City.

Being the only African or Asian in a huge meet--a photography festival held every September, i.e. 'FotoSeptiembre'--with over 800 individual exhibitions should have been daunting, but my naiveté helped me overcome such inhibitions. I was thrilled by the work on display in this amazingly culturally rich city. Manual Alvarez Bravo (one of the legends of photography, friend of Andre Breton, Cartier-Bresson, Diego Riviera, Trotsky) turning up on the day of my talk should have been enough. Reaching across to the next table over dinner to chat with Gabriel Garcia Marquez should have left me sufficiently awed. But I was too excited to be fazed by any of this. I remember most vividly the trip to Oaxaca that Patricia Mendoza, the director of Centro de la Imagen, had organised for a few of us. It was a small but interesting group. Fred Baldwin and Wendy Waitriss, who ran Fotofest in Houston, Alasdair Foster (this was when he ran the photo festival in Edinburgh and before he became the director of the Australian Centre of Photography), and Marcelo Brodsky, the president of Latin Stock from Sao Paolo, made up our distinctly diverse team. We passionately argued, and fervently planned, charting out the routes that we felt photography should take. I remember well those torrid moments, but my most distinct memory is of the midnight visit to the Aztec temples that Patricia had managed to organize. The temples were off-limits after sunset, but Patricia knew everyone there was to know in Mexico City, and had arranged for us to go on a full moon night. I walked along the ancient corridors of the shrine, glistening in the moonlight, in the quiet and eerie stillness. Bats flew, owl hooted, and the lights of a gently glowing Oaxaca sparkled in the valley below. There was Francesco Toledo, sitting on the red clay, chatting to other artists. I could see him just as easily squatting in the dried-up pond in Charukala, or in Modhu'r Canteen, passionately debating the merit of some work of art. This was the artist who had raised millions and donated his own work to set up some of the finest museums and galleries all over Mexico, while, sadly, I couldn't imagine the directors or the DGs of our own institutions coming out of their dull-carpeted offices with towel-backed chairs and touching the earth with such sincerity.

I came back from the trip with memories of brightly coloured shawls, hibiscus and tamarind drinks, the blue beans and the fried crickets--a Mexican delicacy, quite tasty, somewhere between fried shrimp and crab to the Bengali palate, and which go down particularly well with a tamarind juice drink. So when Pedro asked me to speak at the 10th anniversary of zonezero.com in September of this year, I could hardly refuse. Of course, there was still no Mexican embassy, and no guarantee that I could pull off the previous visa trick again in London. The world, as we all know, had changed, and Pedro was loath to have a bearded Muslim negotiate with immigration officers in the 'land of the free'. So this time around it would be Paris! Pedro arranged for a direct flight to Mexico City from Paris, and sent a very official looking letter with lots of stamps to the Mexican embassy there. I was emailed a copy. I was going to Prague enroute, so two visas had to be wrangled. Luckily Martin Hadlow of the Media Development Loan Fund in Prague, and who had invited me there, knew the ambassador in Paris, who knew the ambassador in Bangkok, who spoke to the consul-general in Kuala Lumpur, where the Czech consulate gave me a multiple entry visa immediately. Which still left the Mexican visa very much on the front burner. I was going to buy the tickets to Prague, Amsterdam and Manchester in Paris. So I had a ticket to Mexico and no visa, and a visa to the Czech Republic but no ticket. It was going to be fun.

In Paris I stayed with Sylvie Rebbot, the picture editor of Geo. In the morning, it was Sylvie who navigated the Mexican Embassy's answering machine sil vous plez's, but ended up getting no coherent response from them. So armed with a map, I walked down Strasbourg St Denis to rue de... . The embassy was closed. With my rusty French, I worked out that 16th September was Mexico's Independence Day. Luckily, I had kept a margin and had resisted purchasing my other tickets until I had my Mexican visa. Dominique from Contact Press recommended their travel agent, who was very helpful, but scratched his head over my itinerary. A Paris-Prague one-way came to over $1,200! A return would work out cheaper, but I needed to include a Saturday night. That meant missing out on my show in Groningen in Holland--of 'finger-in-the-dyke' story fame--since I wouldn't have time to go on to Manchester and then to Oldham and back to Paris in time to catch my flight to Mexico City on Tuesday morning. No way, Jose!

Eventually we managed a Paris-Amsterdam-Prague-Amsterdam-Paris ticket that was reasonable, and good old Easyjet from the nearby cybercafe provided a Paris-Liverpool- Paris flight at a quite good price. All I now needed was that Mexican visa. The visa officer I met the next morning, on the 17th, was very pleasant. Pedro had provided an imposing-looking document, with several stamps. The sort bureaucrats love. Gauging that they would issue the visa, I hesitantly asked how long it might take. "48 hours" was the short reply. I was in trouble. All my budget price tickets were non-refundable and non-endorse-able. Besides, I'd already killed two of the four days I was meant to have for this meeting in Prague. Luckily, I had my itinerary with me. The sight of eleven flights, two train journeys and four car journeys across ten cities in three continents over fifteen days should have been enough to convince the visa officer that I was certifiably insane, and shouldn't be allowed in any country, but it worked, and she agreed to let me have the visa in an hour (my flight to Amsterdam was in the afternoon). Then there was the minor matter of the visa fee. 134 Euros to be paid in cash. I gulped. In these days of electronic money, I rarely carried cash with me. No problem. I had my travelers checks. I told her I would be back in a jiffy with the money: Could I have my passport please. "Sorry," she answered, "we need the passport to process the visa." Logical enough, but I was stuck again. I combed all the banks in the neighbourhood, but they wouldn't give me an advance on my credit card without a passport. Eventually I found an officer in a bureau de change who decided he would take the risk, and cashed my travelers checks without a passport. Run back to the embassy, collect visa, rush to Sylvie's, jump on the train to Garu du Nord (Charles de Gaulle airport doesn't have a left luggage), pick up luggage, and finally, armed with visas, tickets and passport, dash for the plane. Paris, Amsterdam, Prague, Amsterdam, Groningen, Amsterdam, Liverpool, Manchester, Oldham, Manchester, Liverpool, Paris. And then on to Mexico City. In between these cities, I took time off to go on a lovely night walk across old Prague. Drew arranged the Liverpool-Manchester-Oldham circuit, and Lotte and Anonna, joined me in Groningen, where Maria and Ype gave me a grand tour of the Norderlicht (the Northern Lights) photofestival. Opening up galleries in the middle of the night, Bresson, George Rodgers, Capa, all in one go! And then there were two of my own shows: one in a synagogue in Groningen and the other in Gallery Oldham that I had gone to see.

Mexico was all that I had expected it to be. Great speakers, old friends, wonderful presentations. My own session was unusual. There were only two speakers as opposed to the customary four. Brian Storm, Bill Gate's right-hand man at Corbis, versus me, a panjabi-clad Muslim from a small agency in Bangladesh! Techno power versus bravado! It was the classic duel between corporate and anti-establishment thinking over the politics of photography usage, over corporate control of images versus individual photographers retaining control over their work. The gallery loved it. I don't think Gates will be interested anytime soon in a takeover bid for our Drik company in Dhaka! It was again at Pedro's on the eve of the talk. Trish, his wife, was leaving for New York the next day, for the judging of the Eugene Smith Awards, and she'd arranged this quick dinner. Mark (senior curator of Victoria and Albert Museum in London) and I were the only guests. Pedro took us for a walk along Coyocan. We went down the streets where Frida Kahlo and Trotsky used to live. Checked out Cortez's palace where Pedro and Trisha were married, and soaked in the energy of Pedro's bustling para.

Then it was onto Mexico's Museum of Anthropology. What a museum! Having taken in some of the more famous museums around the world, I felt I had seen it all, but this one simply took my breath away. Apart from the sheer number of exquisite exhibits on display, I was enchanted by the love and care that had gone into setting up the display. Each piece of stone was carefully positioned, thoughtfully lit, and displayed as a prized possession, which of course they were. The tombs descended down an intricate stairway, with sections cut out, so we could visualise our descent into the burial grounds. Lights carefully placed at floor level lit up small artifacts that characterised the personalities of dead. Tools for the rites of passage, a child's toy, a garment to take one across the border between the living and the dead. The walls, the floor, the ceiling, the distant vision, each had a role to play in this wondrous display.

On the morning of my departure I sneaked off to the Koudelka show. Hanging around the Palais Bella Artes, waiting for the doors to open, I made rapid notes of what was left on my 'to do' list. Gifts for people back home! I was in trouble. But Koudelka was having none of this. This was an exhibition that could not be rushed. The sheer versatility of the man was amazing in itself. And then to see, in his latest reincarnation, images with such mastery of tones, such splendid play of forms, such freshness of vision, was simply mind-blowing. Then, still reeling from this visual feast, I dashed to the alleyways at the back of the Sheraton. There were no ponchos that I was supposed to get for T*, so some Viva Zapata! T-shirts and the odd Mexican trinket would have to do. Then it was goodbye to Pedro and onto the plane.

I stopped in Paris long enough to drop in at Reza's and pick up the CD for the calendar we were bringing out. Sylvie had arranged an assignment for me with Geo, and having taken over the Contact Press Office, I asked the writer to visit me there. Michel Szulc Krysnovsky had just returned from his assignment in Dhaka where Drik Pathshala student Sunny had worked as his fixer. He brought his portfolio over, and we talked of exhibition possibilities. Robert gave a copy of his latest book, on the Cultural Revolution, for R* and me, duly stamped with his new Chinese signature. A few hours sleep at Sylvie's and it was time for the airport again. I would have three whole days in Dhaka before heading off to Taipei. Bliss!

Shahidul Alam heads Drik Picture Gallery in Dhaka.