Mata Ortiz Photography

Miracle and magical are words I've often heard used in relation to Mata Ortiz. I would have to include myself amongst those users. The village has a way of finding you, drawing you in, accepting you and—if you are fortunate enough, worthy enough—of giving herself to you.

Such is the case in my relationship with Mata Ortiz. It is a serendipitous relationship that begins well beyond the banks of the Palanganas River, in coastal Maine. I have a longtime college friend who, with her husband, owns and operates a pottery studio and shop in Belfast, Maine. We visit them every couple of years, and it was on one of these visits in the late 1990s that they shared with us some examples of a beautifully detailed pottery that they had acquired while visiting friends in Tucson.

Several years later, again while we were visiting them, they had a call from a gentleman, the Tucson pottery trader from whom they had purchased this pottery, calling to let them know he was in Connecticut for a craft exhibition and, having unsold pottery, wanting to know if he could come up to Maine. My friend was hesitant as we were her guests, and she didn't want to have business intrude on her social life. With our acquiescence she invited this trader, Tito Carrillo and his son, Pablo, to come up and spend the night.

The next day, when Tito unveiled his merchandise for our friends, we were amazed, charmed, fascinated, awestruck, hooked. We ended up owning our first three Mata Ortiz pots.

At the time—this was probably the year 2000—Tito said that I should come down to Mexico and photograph in the village, because it was changing so rapidly from what it had been twenty-five years earlier when he first started going there. My wife and I had never been to Mexico. I spoke no Spanish.

My stepdaughter was a student at the University of Arizona and we would visit her in Tucson each spring. Each trip we would also visit with Tito and purchase another piece of Mata Ortiz pottery. And each time he again would urge us to visit the village.

Finally, in 2003, along with our friends from Maine, we traveled to Mata Ortiz with Tito. At that time, as many of you know well, the last twenty miles of the journey were a bone-jarring, tooth-rattling drive. But, visible along the route were surveyors and civil engineers laying out what was to become the paved road to Mata Ortiz.

Our intention on that first visit was to buy maybe three or four ollas and spend some time away from the usual Mexican tourist destinations. We left owning twenty-nine ollas in a wide range of quality. And we left with a sense of connection to a group of people whom we had known for only the briefest of times.

This brings me to another of those miracles of Mata Ortiz and that is the good fortune of having first visited there with Tito Carrillo. As many of you know, Tito is beloved in the village. He has played Santa Claus for the children at Christmas. He has brought medicine, diapers, car parts, and shoes to friends and strangers in Mata Ortiz. He is more than a pottery trader and is indeed part of the community. This connection opened a lot of doors for me—literally. It provided me with access that a then-stranger could hardly have dreamed of.

I have been involved in photography in one way or another since 1970, and I have had my own commercial photography business since 1984. In the early 2000s I had begun looking for a personal project to reinvigorate my creativity and interest in photography. When I became aware that the Mexican government was going to be paving the twenty-mile dirt road to Mata Ortiz as an economic engine for the region, this photography project began to form.

Several considerations played into defining the scope and treatment of my photography in Mata Ortiz. First was that there has been a significant amount...