Mexican Color

"Mexico, a resting place for the rainbow" writes essayist Elena Poniatowska in this book centered on the subject of color. What makes the wonderful photographs by Amanda Holmes special and interesting is her way of seeing through the camera lens...in close-ups and unique angles. Categorized into themes, chapter # 1 is "The New World", with the fabulous wall paintings at Cacaxtla and Teotihuacan. # 2: "People of the Sun" focuses on some beautiful churches, as well as a few walls and doors. # 3: "A Sky Blue Balcony", has close-ups of brilliantly hued walls, balconies and building details. # 4: "The Brown Madonna", has everything from church niches to marketplace candies and more muli-colored walls. # 5: "The Space of Light", on modern Mexican architecture, and the colors that bring so much warmth to its clean, stark lines...with some of my favorite combinations, like apple green and bright pink...and that deep yellow that contrasts so well with the blues and aquas.The essays that are with these photographs are interesting and strangely poetic. At first I found the writing somewhat peculiar, then realized it's translated from the Spanish (by Aurora Camacho de Schmidt) in an almost literal manner...but once you get into the rhythm of it, is excellent.This hardback edition seems bigger than 160 pages because of its weight, with good quality thick pages, it's a sturdy volume. This book is much more about color than it is about Mexico, and for those of us who love color, it's a satisfying volume.

I like colors, I like Mexico and, as a result, I was left breathless looking at Holmes' photos. Not only is it a first rate printing job, but Holmes shows that she is an exciting and capable photographer. She is extraordinarily sensitive to color, texture and design, selecting architectural details that left me shaking my head and breathing deeply. Some of her photographs made me feel as if my batteries were recharging. And Poniatowska's commentary is pure poetry. Thanks.

This book presents an eloquent and compelling argument that the traditional popularity of color in Mexican architecture derives directly from Mexico's pre-Conquest, mural-loving civilization. One gets the sense that Moctezuma's empire is finally striking back. The book contrasts Mexico with the relative colorlessness of a European civilization that lost its own tradition of painted architecture sometime between Pompeii and Rome. Not only is Poniatowska able to find an intriguing strain of politics in something as apparently inert as paint on Mexican churches, but Amanda Holmes displays an inspired mastery of the ordinarily separate disciplines of "architectural" and "color" photography. With this book, Holmes has clearly positioned herself as one of the most gifted and most relevant architectural photographers in Latin America, and this book's remarkably visual thesis demonstrates her talent in a formidable context.