Mexico celebrates Halloween on October 31 and the Day of The Dead on November 2nd. This booth offers sweet treats for both holidays. The proprietor hides from the camera, using a batch of pumpkins as a makeshift mask. Many of these sweets, some in shape of skulls, will appear on family altars as Day of The Dead gifts to the spirits of the departed.

This image is intended to work as a photographic document designed to give us insight into the nature of the holiday. Those insights are revealed bit-by-bit in the small details that make up the image. The half hidden man is reduced to a virtual spirit – he is there but not there at the same time. I deliberately partially blocked his face because spirits populate this holiday, and I wanted him to appear as inhuman as possible. The skulls on the table and those on the banner at the back of the booth, as well as the skeletal decorations on both of its walls, incongruously laugh at the concept of death. In mocking death, and making humor out of it, the Mexican celebrants see death as less of a threat, and more of something that is always present in their lives.

Stilt-walkers dressed in medieval costumes draw crowds of on-lookers as they move through the portals lining the city's main plaza. I use an abstract approach here to underscore the festival atmosphere that surrounds the Day of The Dead celebrations in San Miguel. I put the viewer into the image by shifting my vantage point behind the stilt-walkers instead of in front of them. By revealing only their shapes, I tried to intensify the scale incongruity between the towering figures and the crowd that surrounds them. There is a crowded feeling to this image – the people swarming around the performers, the wires draped overhead, even the hint of heavy traffic below, establish a mood of festive energy.

At the city's cultural center, we found a number of students building Day of The Dead altars. The students decorate them with items they believe are beautiful and attractive to the souls of the departed. I took an overhead vantage point to abstract the students and stress the colors of the overall altar. This altar is a work in progress – it eventually will be covered with candles, food, skulls, and various objects representing the interests of the deceased. The abstracted students seem contemplative – they sit in a row, rhythmically repeating the role of floral tributes and candles that are arrayed on a wall just behind them. The late afternoon light adds symbolic warmth to the vivid colors, and provides dappled shadows, creating a quiet, thoughtful mood.

The Day of The Dead is celebrated in sound as well as with sights. Mariachi bands often lead the songs that toast the departed. Music acts directly upon the human spirit, and I wanted to express a sense of that energy here. I did so by using a full one-second shutter speed and moving the camera slowly while the shutter remained open. The result is an extremely abstract image of a vibrating, blurred figure with the outline of a trumpet flowing through the image. While we can’t hear the traditional Mexican music being played at this moment, we can certainly imagine it.

La Katrina is one of the Mexican popular phrases for death. Lady Death is often depicted in Victorian dress. In San Miguel, the eve of The Day of The Dead is celebrated with a parade of La Katrina’s through the town's plaza. Dressed in 19th Century clothing and wearing hats, the Katrina’s, usually expatriates, paint their faces as skulls, and distribute treats to children and then head to a charity ball to raise funds for worthy causes. The ghostly women represent spiritual figures, and that is how I interpret them here. Once again using a full one-second exposure, and moving the camera while the shutter remained open, I was able to create a sense of flow that energizes this highly abstract image. There are two ghastly faces blurred within this image. Their huge circular hats appear to be moving, as do the blurred arms and hands. The image is surreal, expressing the arrival of the spirits of the dead themselves.

This image, the last of a series of three I have posted here of San Miguel’s Day of The Dead La Katrina Parade, is entirely different in both concept and execution than the two that precede it. I wanted to emphasize the nature of the costume, so backed away a bit to include the huge hat and long beads that express the Victorian era in which the Katrina story is set. This woman stopped to pose for the many photographers that surrounded her as she reached the steps of The Parroquia, San Miguel’s brilliantly illuminated parish church. I did not move my camera at all. The shutter stayed open for a full second, which normally should have blurred the entire image due to “camera shake.” As it turned out, the softly focused background of lighted church did blur, adding much energy to the image. However the subject herself remains visible. Why? I never use flash, preferring the qualities of natural light. However other photographers shooting this same subject were using their own flashes, and one of them illuminated the woman for a very brief part of the time that my shutter remained open. That neighborly burst of flash was enough to produce a clear image of her hat, painted face, and beads. The long veil she wears creates the faint pattern on her face and neck. This image is less abstract than the others. But when viewed together with them, it adds important context for the La Katrina parade itself.