Mexico Travel Journal: Moon Blue / Night Hush

One time when I was about eighteen, I shot a series about New York that had no people in it. There were two ways to achieve this: first, by pointing up at the buildings; second, by aiming at a place and waiting for a while. It taught me that I do not exactly have the patience to be an architecture or landscape photographer. But it made me realize that the concept of silence as a physical occurrence mattered to me.

When I got to Mexico DF yesterday, it was Christmas Day and the streets were empty. It felt like a fear-less version of post-G8 downtown Toronto. I walked the streets peacefully, almost alone, and focused on what I love: to look at lines and textures, at colours and street sign fonts, to get lost gazing at places, spaces. The immobility of a city that's always awake moves me.

And so in the images below, I offer my take on a giant napping under the gaze of a too-small moon that, though almost absent, provides a light that we as imagemakers ceaselessly chase or attempt to recreate. The way the moonlight speaks to us is subtle, reflective.

And the night eventually sets.
And the tone of our conversations with our surroundings changes.
Now, there are intermittent pools of light, reminders of our presence.
We tend to walk more intently, or sometimes tentatively, carrying a healthy sense of fear within us.
The sounds of the city overshadow its physicality in our minds.
Night time flows at a different pace, neither faster nor slower, but less anchored, more emotion-driven.