¡Exprésate! - Day Four - National Centre for the Arts

Today (ten years ago) was one of my most memorable. In the morning, we did a quick location scout to Adriana's parents house. I'm not sure who Adriana is. She had some connection with Holt. Maybe Marta can fill me in. But that wasn't the memorable part. Our photo-shoot at the National Centre for the Arts was. Just the architecture alone was fun to photograph but we visited the Music department, Art, theatre, dance and more. We started out in the studio of the art dept. where I photographed a student working on his painting. There were many student paintings all over the studio and the light was beautiful. From there we walked to the sculpture studio where inside a couple students were working on a metal sculpture. Outside a student was working on a clay sculpture and from here we walked into the pottery studio.


Painting and Sculpture class - Images by Don Couch

Next, we walked over to the music dept. During the walk, we encountered some students in a freestyle performance. They were running around the campus in a free flowing improv style. At one point the "leader" of the group grabbed me by the arm and we took off running while the others followed acting out a freestyle performance with me as the main character. He told me I was descending into Hell and the was reborn. I tried my best to keep photographing during this.


improv - Images by Don Couch

We then went to the theatre dept. was I photographed some students practicing a stage production, I recall the instructor was a bit put off by our presence but we did have permission to be there so he reluctantly let us in.


theatre class - Images by Don Couch

Next was the dance studio was next. Here I photographed ballet dancers practising. I could have spent all day here. In fact, from a photographer's standpoint, I could have spent all day in ANY of these studios. But this was the nature of this project. "Get in and Get out" "Gun an Run" was what I was told I would be doing. It was so true. It really tested my abilities as a photographer to walk in, access the location and get to work. Marta never pressured me but I was aware of all we had to accomplish in the short period of time we had. This "show up and shoot" style became my mantra. I quickly realized I couldn't control the who, what where and when of our shoots. So much had been preplanned before I even arrived in Mexico. I was here, I had a job to do and that's what I did.


Dance Class - Images by Don Couch