the other side

 In the year 2000, in Oaxaca, for the first time photographing El Dia de los Muertos, in Mexico, I found a different celebration, compared to the Day of the Dead, "Finados", in Brazil. Traditions left by the Zapotec civilization revered death and the skull being a sacred symbol used against evil spirits, and it has been passed on from generation to generation.  

I returned to Oaxaca in 2014 and 2017 on the same date, a much larger festivity was going on in the city, but the rituals and passages on the night of October 31 remained sacred. In these two years I have documented other faces of history, the ruins and the city, the joys and the fears. During these periods of capture I gradually became familiar with some parts of the "new festivity", looking like carnival with different groups, mainly in the principal streets. Oaxaca received during the week, before the main night in the cemetery, various groups of "pueblos" that came masked, painted and fireworks exploded waking up the sleepy spirit.  

I captured images that were important to tell this story and also thinking that there is always the other side, of death, but much more of the celebration of life.