Chocholá de los Venados, Yucatán

Yesterday I found some old CD's in a box. I recognized them right away, they have been in every move I had to make, to every city or country I have ever lived since 1998. I remembered at one point, technology banned me from it's contents, since Macs deemed CD drives obsolete a few years ago.

After recovering it's contents, which I had to transfer from a CD to a USB (in an old PC), the format they were in, offered no preview but this sad little icon.

For a moment I thought I was experiencing the same impatience I felt once as I was printing out a contact sheet from an analog camera roll, only in a digital realm. I have four folder files with 100 pictures each in a PCD format. Yet I found a free and quick solution online that delivered what a contact sheet would do for any photographer.

I can do previews now. For batch processes and better quality there are other choices but this will do for now. Even if I spend time in this one-by-one process, there is a constant delight on finding material sitting in the dark. Analogue and digitally speaking.

There is also another interesting thing coming back too. The person I used to be, the one that recaptured what was felt in that specific moment or what I was aiming for in those pictures. For example, I remember making a photoshoot out of a turkey because my thesis project dealt with it's humble and slow pace, the slow pace of the people in Chocholá de los Venados in the southern state of Yucatán.

Back then, one of my main worries was about indigenous people being left behind by modernity. Incredibly so, I still am. Yet, are they left behind? Aren't they where they are supposed to be? In a very zapatista manner, resisting the decadence of our frenzied, insatiable ways?