Escondido (Hidden), by Federico Gama
Categories: Contribute — Tags: Federico Gama, Mexico, Punk, Urban
Translations:
español •
Text1 and photos by Federico Gama.
Between November and December 2004 I found myself compelled to start a new project. What I was seeing right outside my window was something truly extraordinary, and it suggested a substantive continuation of themes I’d been exploring in the previous fifteen years: cultural migrations, identity, and dress as a form of expression.
Every Sunday I’d see them pass by, in twos, or singly, or in groups: curious urban-style Mexico City kids who beat an almost ritualistic path. They’d go from the Chapultepec metro station to an area near Tacubaya station, and they walked down the very street where I live, as if to shout “Here I am and you can’t escape me.” It was evident that the players in this pageant—a story I’d wanted to tell for some years—were enthralled by urban fashion.
Right at noon on Sunday 13 March 2005 I began my wanderings near the Tacubaya metro station, just as I’d been doing for several months previously. I habitually began at Tacubaya station, would continue outside Pino Suárez metro station and end the afternoon at a downtown park, the Alameda Central, guided by whatever I’d find in the streets related to a project I named Mazahuacholoskatopunk, in which I sought to portray indigenous young people in youthful fashions and styles derived from so-called “urban tribes.”
That Sunday, with my camera and a 70-300 mm zoom, I surreptitiously followed the young people milling about among the carnival rides that stretch from Metro Tacubaya to the Cartagena Market. I sat for a while on a stairway that divides the park until I saw a group of three punks, so I ran to the opposite side of where they were headed. I knew they were on their way to nearby lunch counters, to have a beer, and that I could get good front-on shots of them when they came back or made their way around nearby alleys. Ultimately I perched myself on a garden wall where I could keep an eye on two walkways or alleys and achieve a good vantage point on both streets, that afforded an interesting composition involving some shuttered storefronts.
On Sundays, the alleys around Metro Tacubaya tend to be rather abandoned compared to their weekday bustle. I waited for twenty disappointing minutes and grew a bit disappointed since I thought the punks weren’t going to come back. But then I saw them walking in my direction—a group of maybe ten or fifteen. My wait had paid off.
It was exciting to see these young people walking defiantly, masters of their environment and its scene, and though I took care not to be noticed, I knew that not much time would pass before they’d see me there; as well I thought that I’d only have the chance to get four shots, at most, before they’d see I was taking photos. I wanted to avoid being noticed for a number of reasons: the subjects’ attitudes would change, they’d stop allowing me to take pictures and furthermore, I’d lose this extraordinary set-up.
It was the largest group I’d seen with the characteristics that had interested me—and in within the context of one of the city’s roughest neighbourhoods.
I took the first shot when I had them in the viewfinder; I framed the shot around the group to include the greatest number, focusing on the central personalities to reduce focus on the foreground or background, because of their imposing manner of moving forward together—flexibly and defiantly, like a school of fish. I wanted that idea of confidence and defiance to come through precisely in my photographs. Then I hit upon another possibility, and in a split second I opened up the frame to contextualize where they were walking and I started shooting again. The first personalities had already passed my visual field and I focused on those I had in the foreground but in the back of the image I included the sign at the lunch place, called Escondido (Spanish for “hidden”), where they’d eaten and had their beers. I also included another figure, a bearded man that’s seen off in the distance to the right and who has nothing to do with the group. I wanted to include him as a confrontation or contrast to the young men, since the context where they hang out on Sundays doesn’t belong to them; from Monday to Saturday, it’s a place where different groups come together and it functions on a different level. I thought in this composition I could play with the ambiguity of the figures in the space, with a textual reference affirming that someone is hidden, as well as the image of that other figure that can barely be seen to the right—a figure that some have told me resembles an image of Christ. To be honest, I didn’t imagine anything like that at that moment, but with every passing I day I grow more convinced that that’s how the figure’s image works. Lastly I took one more shot of one last guy who was approaching the lunch place’s door—where the other guys had chosen to have a beer and where he, arms crossed, stood watching as the rest of his friends entered the restaurant.
In a few seconds what I’d feared would happen, did; they discovered me. But I’d already gotten three great shots of the group, along with that sensation all photographers get when they work on film and have to go to the lab to see the results: a strong hunch I’d captured something really great, and at the same time, a terrible fear the shots would somehow not turn out.
The adventure didn’t end there. They told me right away they didn’t want their pictures taken. It wasn’t hard to figure out who was the leader, so I went up to him to see if I could talk him in to letting me take a group photo, but he utterly refused and indicated that none of them allowed his photo to be taken. Posed pictures, in fact, did not interest me; I just wanted to start a conversation to ease tensions a little and try to explain to them why I was after the images. The situation was tricky—maybe dangerous—for a lone photographer in an abandoned alleyway, on Sunday, and in a part of town where the police practically don’t exist. But based on experience with these youth groups, I knew that everything was under control. They maintained they didn’t like photos and that one time someone had been taken pictures of them at the Merced Market, had failed to deliver them, and had then sought to sell them to the boys at a very high price. I explained I was interested in the current fashions of young people who had emigrated from small towns to Mexico City, to take jobs in construction, for a photo-documentary project. The notion seemed so odd to them that it only fed their insecurity. They objected in clumsy, slum-style Spanish: No se hace. No bandas. No foto. No se hace bandas. No foto—Not happening; no way, man. No photos. Don’t even go there; no pictures.
- Translated in english by Michael Parker-Stainback. [↩]
