This photo walk was a family-oriented one, exploring the two parks along Calle Orizaba, visiting some kid-friendly places, popping into Casa Lamm and photographing the street art. The small boys had to look out for certain animals and objects in the street paintings and we also found some playgrounds for them.One of the boys took photos using my camera... and somehow the settings got changed, unnoticed by me, so some of the pictures have a different look to them! I think you can say that he injected a bit of creativity into the photos!
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The Universidad Nacional Autónomo de México (UNAM) is Mexico's biggest and most prestigious public university, but it is much more than that. In 2007, the specially-built campus in the south of Mexico City called the University City, was declared UNESCO World Heritage Site for its architecture and for the murals created by leading Mexican muralists. It also has a large ecological reserve featuring the Espacio Escultórico, where art is integrated into nature and the environment. For Photo Walk Nº88, we went to check out these areas and photograph them. We then made our way by car to the Espacio Escultórico, still within the extensive grounds of the Ciudad Universitaria. Here the ancient solidified lava bed left behind by the Xitle volcano eruption and its natural environment have been conserved from development. First, we walked to the spectacular 120-metre circular sculpture which looked rather other-worldly and certainly not something you would expect to find among the concrete spread of Mexico City. Then we crossed over the road to where a series of gigantic metallic and concrete structures loomed out of the vegetation. We had fun taking photos in the multi-coloured sculpture called Coatl by artist Helen Escobedo and some of us did some nature photography.To cap it all, the weather was unusually hot and sunny and provided us with some beautiful blue skies for our backgrounds and put some colour in our cheeks.For Photo Walk Nº87 we wandered around the neighbourhood of San Angel, capturing the colours and Colonial flavour with our cameras. As Day of the Dead is coming up in a couple of weeks, the market was full of sugar skulls and things to decorate altars with. We then made our way to the market which, in addition to fresh fish, mounds of bright orange pumpkins and delicious-looking mushrooms, was full of Day of the Dead items such as sugar skulls, colourful paper flags and marigolds. This market has some interesting murals depicting the market in San Angel from pre-Hispanic times to today and also some of the main characters in Mexican history, although with so many extra stands, it was hard to see them.Time ran out so we didn't go into the Ex-Convento del Carmen, famous for its mummies, but just looked at it across a very busy road. In fact, to see the convent properly, we would probably need to do another photo walk... there is so much to see in this Colonial gem.Rubbing shoulders in Tlatelolco's Plaza de las Tres Culturas (Square of Three Cultures) are Aztec ruins, a Spanish Colonial church and a 1960s residential complex. Over the centuries, the area around this square has also witnessed the massive slaughter of Indians by the Spanish, a massacre of students by the military and hundreds of deaths in a lethal earthquake. We went to find out more on Photo Walk Nº86.Tlatelolco, the sister city of Tenochtitlán (now Mexico City), was the biggest market in Aztec times and thousands of people came here daily to trade, bringing their goods in canoes since Tlatelolco was located on an island in a shallow lake. Rising up in the centre of the square was a massive pyramid with two temples on top. It's hard to imagine what it must have looked like but the archaeologists have discovered at least 7 layers to the pyramid. Each new ruler built a bigger pyramid over the top of the former one. When Hernán Cortés arrived here in 1521, his army fought against the Aztec ruler Cuauhtémoc and his people, slaughtering 40,000 Indians. The Spanish conquerors then destroyed the temple and built a church using the same stones. The Iglesia de Santiago was inaugurated in 1610 and the Colegio annexed to it became the first higher education centre in the Americas. This church too was badly damaged by last year's earthquake and to see huge cracks in the walls, damaged bell towers and scaffolding inside the church was a bit unnerving. The square is surrounded by the Nonoalco Tlatelolco housing complex, built in the 1960s and viewed at that time as a modern concept. 102 apartment blocks housed 80,000 people and the area also had hospitals, schools, parks, shops and theatres... a city within a city. Unfortunately, a couple decades after the complex was built, an 8.0 earthquake shook Mexico City in 1985 causing one of the 15-storey apartment blocks to collapse, killing hundreds of residents. Another 12 apartment blocks had to be demolished due to the damaged sustained and many people moved away from the area, leaving it to become dilapidated and crime-ridden. In more recent years, efforts have been made to improve conditions here, including some new street art to brighten up the buildings.
For Photo Walk Nº85, we spent the morning at the "Museo Nacional de Arte" (MUNAL) in the Centro Histórico where we learned some tips for taking more interesting photos in a museum. The key is to look for a variety of images and pay special attention to composition and details.The museum is housed in the former "Palacio de Comunicaciones", a building of neoclassical eclectic style, with Manuel Tolsa's equestrian statue of Charles IV of Spain standing in the square outside the front of the museum. The rather stern grey exterior hides an unexpectedly elegant interior, complete with sweeping staircase, intricate metalwork and spectacular paintings on the ceilings. Porfirio Diaz wanted to turn Mexico City into the Paris of Latin America and commissioned an Italian architect to design the building which was to epitomize modernity and progress. The elegant reception hall was where he made public statements and received dignitaries from other countries.The Museum's permanent collection includes Mexican artists and their work ranging from the mid 16th Century to the mid 19th Century, divided into three periods: the Colonial period, the first century after Mexican Independence and the period from the Mexican Revolution to the 1950s. They also periodically host temporary exhibitions such as the one we saw: Saturnino Herrán and other modernists. We all came away with a collection of photos quite different from the others but which was much more interesting than just a series of paintings and sculptures. And some of us were wondering why it had taken us so long to visit this spectacular museum which often isn't included in the top sites to visit in Mexico City. |
Margaret MetcalfeBorn to travel, explore and share photos and experiences Archives
May 2019
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