Touchstone
Touchstone is a series documenting the landscapes, structures, and people in Santa María del Oro, my ancestral hometown in Jalisco, Mexico. The town is named for its Catholic devotion and the gold that was prevalent in the area during the Spanish conquest in the 1500s.
I first visited Santa María del Oro in January 2023 to celebrate the weeks-long festival of the Catholic Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. During this time, long processions take place into the mountains and the central plaza becomes filled with outside family members. But my attention quickly shifted inward, my inability to speak Spanish at the time and my unfamiliarity with distant family members limiting my experience to observation.
I reflected on the aspects of heritage that bypass language or culture, namely a shared experience with the landscape that ancestors have used for generations. This project became not a documentation of town activities, but a series that expressed my attempt to extract meaning from the mountainscapes, symbols, and fragmented stories that create a link to my family in the town.