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By Colin Jarvie
Two years ago an overland trip from Mexico City to Guatemala saw
me taking a side-trip to visit Acapulco - the granddaddy of glamorous,
international beach resorts.
Acapulco is one of those places that everybody has heard of but
hardly anybody knows much about. It's name conjures up a myriad
of rather fuzzy images – Hollywood royalty vacationed there
in the Fifties; Elvis made a movie there; it’s that place
where those guys risk certain death diving from the cliffs. I think
the yacht in the movie ‘The Lady From Shanghai’ with
Orson Wells and Rita Heyworth called in there. The Love Boat certainly
did.
What captivated me, however, was none of this mythology. Rather,
I became fascinated by the rundown local buses that ply their trade
along the coastal road (La Costera) that runs right along the glittering
curve of Acapulco Bay. Despite their route through the heart of
wealthy, tourist Acapulco, these buses are patronised almost exclusively
by locals. As such, they offer an insight into local life that few
tourists get to see.
What immediately caught my eye was, in contrast to the dilapidated
vehicles themselves, the rather elaborate decoration of the driver’s
area. There were a dazzling array of objects and symbols. I had
seen similar in other countries, but these seemed unique in the
complexity and clashing diversity of the displays – Homer
Simpson next to an image of Jesus on the Cross, a near-naked woman
sharing front-row space with Mexico’s patron saint, The Lady
of Guadeloupe, cuddly toys, plastic figurines, even a vase of flowers.
They were fascinating private/public displays.
Two years later I returned with a 5/4 camera. During short breaks
in the drivers’ 12-18 hour days I captured 25 of these interiors
on film. In each shot the basic composition was the same –
important so that it didn't detract from the subject – with
the camera replicating the passengers’ view: the driver looking
back down the bus by way of his rear-view mirror. The very sameness
that appears from bus to bus, and the common elements in all the
displays – a fringed curtain covering part of the window,
always some kind of religious ornament, and often a national emblem
of some description (flag or plaque etc.) – is contrasted
with the diversity of each interior up close.
These photographs are a document, an entertainment, a curiosity
- much like the buses’ displays themselves. They straddle
a traditional practice that has been around almost since the invention
of photography when it was the domain of the gentleman adventurer
and a contemporary vision striving for some sort of conceptual aesthetic
and truth – what is now being described as ‘conceptual
documentary’.
Some of the cabins are peacock displays, all colour and show, whilst
others are more modest affairs with little private adornments, set
out for the world to see without explanation and indeed without
need of any. In my two-year absence what had been a widespread,
though intensely personal activity, had transformed; privately owned
buses airbrushed with homages to Hollywood movies and comic-book
heroes ran alongside the run-down publicly owned buses I had first
encountered. What had started as a personal display of religious
belief, national pride and private loyalty had become a more formalised,
competitive activity.
These photographs are loaded with symbolism. Not of the photographer’s
making, but of the micro-culture they record. The end result is
a series of bewildering tableaux as beautiful as they are fascinating,
each one a colourful, multi-layered portrait. Viewed individually,
they captivate; seen together they present an intriguing insight
into a wider Mexican culture.
There 25 images in this series.
The final prints are 48”X60”
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