Easter in the Mountains – Forget Egg Hunts, the Cora Paint Themselves and Hold a Sacred Dance-Off
The Cora, or Naayari, as they call themselves, were the last indigenous ethnic group in Mexico to be conquered by the Spanish—they held out until 1722. Many of them still live in isolated communities along the Sierra del Nayar mountain range, remote settlements that are only reachable by plane and lack basic services like running water and electricity. Not much has changed since precolonial times. The Cora adhere to their own idiosyncratic blend of Catholicism and animism, which manifests in their unique way of celebrating Easter.
I shot these portraits during the Judea Cora (their version of Catholicism’s Holy Week), in San Juan Bautista, a small town in the state of Nayarit. The celebration’s rituals involve physical acts of contrition, similar to Lent, but the Cora also celebrate in all-day ceremonies meant to represent a cosmic battle with the fate of the world hanging in the balance, while simultaneously depicting the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
It’s pretty confusing, but as I understand it, the significant rituals begin on the night of Ash Wednesday, when participants covered in body paint made from burnt, ground-up corn—who are meant to represent Jews and Romans—perform a dance that signifies the “rise of evil.” On Thursday morning, these Cora fast while wandering through town in a ritual that evokes the Romans’ search for Christ. Later that afternoon, another set of dancers, this time representing Christ’s apostles, paint themselves white. Then the two factions meet in the center of the village for a ceremony—the “Jews” eat while the “apostles” dance until nightfall, after which they host a separate meal before returning home. The Jews then dance from dusk until around midnight, when they go out in search of corn to “steal.” (In reality, a farmer donates the corn in exchange for a blessing of his harvest.) This year, the Jews left the town center at 1 AM and returned with sacks full of corn around 6 AM. Other biblical characters like the Pharisees and figures from the Coras’ own myths round out the cast.
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Ian Berry Takes Jaw-Dropping Photos of Massacres and Floods
Magnum is probably the most famous photo agency in the world. Even if you haven’t heard of it, chances are you’re familiar with its images, be they Robert Capa’s coverage of the Spanish Civil War or Martin Parr’s very British holiday-scapes. Unlike most agencies, Magnum’s members are selected by the other photographers on the agency, so becoming a member is a pretty grueling process. As part of an ongoing partnership with Magnum, we will be profiling some of their photographers over the coming weeks.
In 1962, Ian Berry was invited to join Magnum by Henri Cartier-Bresson—which, in photographic terms, is about as close to canonization as you can get. His invitation followed his work in South Africa, where he was the only photographer to witness the massacre at Sharpeville, one of the more brutal events in late-apartheid history. His photos were retrospectively used in court to prove that the protest had been peaceful. He has covered conflict in Czechoslovakia, Israel, Ireland, and Vietnam.
VICE: I understand you’ve been with Magnum for longer than 50 years now. Is that correct?
Ian Berry: Yes. I’m horrified to admit it, but yes. That says something about my inability to let go, I think. I think of quitting every year and never get around to doing it.
You got your start in South Africa. How did you end up there?
Well, as a young Brit, I wanted to travel. And in those days you could get assisted passages to what was formerly, and in those times still, the Commonwealth. So, you could go to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and South Africa. South Africa sounded the most exciting. You know, I thought I’d be seeing lions on the streets of Johannesburg and so on.
Ha.
As it happened, my family knew a photographer there who had just come back from the States assistingAnsel Adams. And he was prepared to stand as a guarantor for me for a year. I didn’t actually need a visa but you had to have someone guarantee you. So I legged it out to South Africa, and that was it really. No regrets, either—it was a very exciting time to be there.
You had no real formal training in photography beyond that, did you?
College for photography really didn’t exist at that time. The best thing you could do was become somebody’s apprentice, and that’s what I did. I mean, he was shooting on a four by five, and everything was lit, and so on. So it was great training, even though I realized that it wasn’t what I wanted to do.
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See Donald Weber’s Brutal Ukranian Interrogation Photos in Person in NYC
Donald Weber is one of our favorite photographers. In addition to traveling the world and shooting for every publication that matters and winning a Guggenheim Fellowship and Lange-Taylor documentary prize, he recently put out an amazing photo book, Interrogations (Schilt Publishing, 2011), that documents the psychologically humiliating interrogations of Ukraine’s petty criminals. The crimes of the accused are listed underneath their photos. If you can look at this kind of raw human shame and perverse humiliation without cringing, you’re probably a corrections officer or in the CIA.
In regards to the photos, Donald said, “Without confessions, courts everywhere would grind to a halt in an instant; more than 90 percent of all charges in the Russian and Ukrainian judicial systems end in guilty pleas, and only experienced criminals and highly educated defendants stand a chance. This is what the cops are doing behind their closed doors—the feudal system’s trial by ordeal is still much with us.”
Donald will be having an opening reception for Interrogationstonight at the Foley gallery in New York City, and the photos will be remain on display through the end of May. In anticipation of his big fancy opening, we sat down to talk to him about spending nearly a year hanging out in dirty Ukrainian police stations, watching people get beat up, Sharpied, and pistol-whipped.
VICE: These were all from Ukraine, right?
Donald Weber: Yeah, exactly. It was in 2010 and 2011. I made two separate trips for three or four months each in the winter time.
How did you even know or stumble upon this? Through the police?
My very first trip was in 2005. I met the policeman who ended up becoming my guide into the criminal world. Over the next five years, I got to know him more and more and began to understand the idea of criminality and how it works. That’s basically how I came up with the idea of doing an interrogation. It took me two or three years when I had the idea and then another two years to convince him to let me photograph.
How did you meet him in Ukraine?
It was my very first trip to the Ukraine. I didn’t have much to do and my friend said, “I know a policeman. Why don’t you go meet him?” That night he was going on a raid, and he asked me to come along to see what it was like. From there, I always maintained contact with him. Every time I’d go to the Ukraine, I would see him and go out. For one of my very first projects, he was a key component for introducing me to certain types of people.
What kind of people?
Kind of gangster dudes. Just low-level Mafia guys. Nothing serious.
What did you think of his character?
He is an incredibly conflicted character, I think. In one aspect, I’d hear him talking to criminals in Fenya—the language that criminals speak—and then he would call either his mom, wife, or his daughter and he’d be very goody-goody. He’d say, “Oh hi, Mommy! I love you and miss you so much!” There were these dual characters about him.
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Over the next two months, in celebration of the forthcoming release of Tao Lin’s latest novel, Taipei, we will be featuring a weekly selection of photos taken by the author during his recent trip to Taipei, Taiwan. While there, he took thousands of pictures with his iPhone, pictures which he has divided into albums titled things like “Taipei funny,” “Taipei food,” Taipei babies,” and “Taipei animals,” among others. The images were taken between January and February 2013 during one of his semi-yearly visits to the Taiwanese capital, where his parents live. This first selection is titled “Taipei babies.” All photos and captions by Tao Lin.
Taipei, will be released on June 4 from Vintage and is available for pre-order now. To read an early excerpt from the novel that we published in 2011 titled “Relationship Story,” click here.
confusion baby
bat baby
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VICE Loves Magnum: Thomas Dworzak Takes Photos of Sad Marines and Taliban Poseurs
Magnum is probably the most famous photo agency in the world. Even if you haven’t heard of it, chances are you’re familiar with its images, be they Robert Capa’s coverage of the Spanish Civil War or Martin Parr’s very British holiday-scapes. Unlike most agencies, Magnum’s members are selected by the other photographers on the agency, so becoming a member is a pretty grueling process. As part of an ongoing partnership with Magnum, we will be profiling some of their photographers over the coming weeks.
Thomas Dworzak joined Magnum in 2000. His books often deal with war. His first, Taliban, was a found photo project which freaked out a lot of Americans who didn’t want to see what the Taliban looked like when they were fooling about. M*A*S*H IRAQ examined the daily lives of US Medevac teams in Iraq, and his latest book,Kavkuz, explored the impact years of brutal war had on the Caucasus region. Oddly enough, in spite of shooting in some of the most hellish conditions imaginable, he thinks Paris is the hardest place to work in.
VICE: You are often described as a “war photographer.” How do you feel about that?
Thomas Dworzak: It’s a label. What are you going to do about it? I’m not going to say I am not one, because I do go, and I used to go very often, to these conflict areas. But there are definitely people out there who are more into combat than me. There is a scale of how much involvement in war one has. And I’m not all the way up there.
How did working in Chechnya during the war there differ from your time in Iraq?
I think in Chechnya, I was more “on the ground.” I was hitchhiking around, trekking alone. You would talk to the fighters, you would spend time with them, and then if there was an attack you would arrive with them. It was all done in a very disorganized, one to one, personal way. I think Chechnya was very extreme as a war, compared to anything that I have seen since.
Extreme in what way?
Just the sheer amount of stuff I saw flying around. It was an atrocious war. Bosnia was very brutal of course, but there was not so much physical destruction, it was more killing and revenge on a very personal and human level, between neighbors or whatever. Chechnya was brutal in every way. The destruction of Grozny reached a level I had not seen until then, and haven’t seen since. I guess you might come across something like it now in Aleppo, for example. There was no accreditation when I was working there, no paperwork. I learned Russian so I could talk to the fighters. They were welcoming, so I spent time with them. Whereas in Iraq and Afghanistan I was embedded. You get your piece of paper and the military has to take care of you.
In what way did that affect your work? What’s your view on the embed format, do you think it worked well?
I think there is a strange kind of freedom in the structure of an embed. A lot of people have been bitching about it, going on about the embed being “the end of press freedom” and all that, but I don’t really think that’s true. I don’t know anything about Iraq really; I haven’t seen Iraq outside of the American point of view for so long now. But if I choose to cover the American angle, then an embed is not a bad way to do it. Because it is so institutionalized, you can actually move around and do a lot. You don’t have to beg, you don’t have to worry about anything. It’s a bit duller in that sense. You just have to follow the guys in front of you. And there are not that many decisions to be made. I find embeds pretty relaxing in that way.
Was your M•A•S•H• IRAQ project concluded over one single embed?
It was almost all embed work. I don’t want to over-emphasize the fact that some photos—just a few—weren’t taken in embeds as it’s meant to be an embed book. I don’t know, maybe it was two years or three years, something like that. The core of the work was done over a year, I did maybe five or six embeds with the medical units over that time.
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New Photos from Coco Young
Coco Young was Ryan McGinley’s “It” model in 2009 and 2010, later becoming the face of Cynthia Rowleyand walking the Marc Jacobs fall 2010 runaway. Those are quite the feats for a 20-year-old in New York City.
Now, at 24, you could say she’s on the road to becoming the “It” photographer, with an intriguing portfolio that I’ve tried to get bored of but can’t. Plus, google her and try not to fall in love with her beautiful face. Totally impossible. And she was kind enough to send us some mostly unreleased photographs to share with you guys.
Coco Young’s photographs employ a particular aesthetic that manages to create a push and pull between intimacy and voyeurism with her subjects—to an almost surreal degree. Sometimes her photos feel way too intimate with a weird-ass sitter presented beyond the point of comfort, and then the next image surprisingly manages to put us at ease with an intricate seminude. You go from seeing a casual portrait of Charlotte Free in a hallway to an Asian man with a Hitler mustache and an awkward bowl cut, to someone climbing up a gravestone as if it were an unholy Kilimanjaro. In a generation filled with daily-life, snapshot photography, Coco Young is doing it better.
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