Oaxaca Stories in Cloth 

A book about people, belonging, roots, identity and adornment.

2017 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards, Gold, Multicultural

2017 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards, Silver, Art & Photography

2017 Latino Book Awards, Second Place, Art Books

On the surface this is a book about what I call community fashion.  Community fashion is a style of dress shared in common by members of a village or town, a collective identity.  It is not uncommon that the clothing is made by the very people of those communities and often its design is filled with symbolic meaning, dreamt into being over the generations, stories in cloth, that like language, are  dynamic and slowly evolving.

The focus of this book is the mega-diverse Mexican state of Oaxaca, a place I lived for 25 years. Over a two year period I visited 57 communities and took over 200 portraits of individuals who continue  to dress in the way of their unique heritage  on a daily basis. The collection of images in this book represent the largest visual registry in existence of the diversity of community fashion in Oaxaca. A selection of them are highlighted in my Living Threads gallery.

Yet much more than being a book about clothing, this is a book about people, belonging, heritage and roots. I see this book as a beautiful and poetic dose of medicine for people like myself who come from a culture that has lost so much connection to what is deeply meaningful and holy about existence. 

For me, the clearest, most beautiful way to characterize this somewhat intangible thing called heritage and belonging, these roots and this sense of what is holy, is through photos of traditional people and their dress ways,  people who understand belonging and roots the way I understand breathing. So though the focus would appear to be fashion, the story that this clothing tells for me is not so much one of how people dress, but what is symbolized by dressing in a way shared  in common by the members of one’s village. 

Clothing becomes a flag of community, draped over one’s shoulders and wrapped  around one’s hips as a way of saying, “I am of We, and We are of Here”.  It is a statement of belonging, a proud woven link to deep ancient layers of artistic heritage. And in each and every one of these rooted communities, one’s parents, grandparents and great grandparents were also from there, knowing that they are members of an extended family, this oldest and most perfect human support system. Likewise they are, by birthright, part of an interconnected circle of community. To live in such a place, where so many generations of one’s ancestors have lived, is then to live in the fertile compost of layer upon layer of stories, generations of being and experience, the duff of lifetimes enriching your roots. These are the kind of conditions humans have evolved to exist in, this is what allows our hearts to blossom and our souls to be filled. In this way, which is the ancient way of all of us, there exists a simple thing called well-being. 

Excerpt from Acknowledgements, Oaxaca Stories in Cloth

This book exists for and because of the strongly rooted

people of traditional Oaxaca. They have been my teachers as

I search to make sense out of a fractured, hard-edged modern

world and seek the essence of what it must be like to live deeply

in a place, a way, and a community. My gut tells me there is

something very sane and human to be found in such conditions.

First and foremost, I thank you. By you I mean all the

people who stand present in this book and the thousands more

who stand at your sides. You opened your doors and invited

me in, offered me a seat, and gave me a hot drink. You told me

stories of your day, your fields, your long walks, and of simple

things filled with meaning. And then you filled my hands with

gifts of homemade tamales and tortillas as I bid farewell in the

afternoon. This book belongs to you. Let it live as a reminder of

the value of your singular cultures, arts, and heritage. Let your

children see you in your humble power and quiet dignity and

recognize the profound value of the many generations of learning

you embody even as they are tempted to leave it behind for

the lure of money and shiny digital devices. And let the people

beyond these old communities and rooted ways, some of whom

out of their ignorance consider you and your ways somehow

less, see this book as well and understand the wisdom of our

rooted brothers and sisters on this planet. Thank you all for

your teachings, for being the example to a rootless one like me.