Walking Photo Course

I've lived in Oaxaca since 2007 and photographed it almost every day since. Oaxaca has a literary side, the same as Paris does for me, and it's easy to walk right past it. This course walks you through it, camera in hand.

The route

We start at Santo Domingo. Across the street on Alcalá is the Instituto de Artes Gráficas de Oaxaca, the library the painter Francisco Toledo founded. A few blocks away is the photography center he named for Manuel Álvarez Bravo, where we talk about his daughter, the Zapotec poet Natalia Toledo, and about the photographers who worked in Oaxaca: Edward Weston and Tina Modotti in the 1920s, Henri Cartier-Bresson in Juchitán in 1934, Álvarez Bravo himself, and Juan Rulfo, who wrote Pedro Páramo and photographed here in the 1950s. The street itself is named for Macedonio Alcalá, who wrote the waltz Dios nunca muere.

Oaxaca's own writers are here, too. José Vasconcelos, who wrote La raza cósmica, was born in this city. The Zapotec writer Andrés Henestrosa, who retold his people's legends inLos hombres que dispersó la danza, left his books to the city. They're now a public library in the Casa de la Ciudad, near my office, where I've shown my own photographs.

A couple of blocks away is the old convent of Santa Catalina, now the Quinta Real hotel, where I've photographed weddings. Italo Calvino set his story Under the Jaguar Sun there: a couple traveling in Mexico, staying in a hotel that used to be a convent, eating their way through Oaxaca.

Then we walk to Pino Suárez, where D.H. Lawrence spent the winter of 1924 and wrote much ofMornings in Mexico. Malcolm Lowry came through in the late 1930s, and spent part of it in jail. Aldous Huxley and Oliver Sacks passed through, too, and wrote about it.

In between are the places I keep coming back to as a photographer: old walls, doorways, courtyards, and the light on the stone late in the day.

The course happens along the way

There's no set lesson plan. I teach to you and to whatever comes up as we go: a doorway in harsh sun, a courtyard in shade, a street full of people. If you're new to your camera, we start with how it works. If you already know it, we spend the time on composition and light. Phones are fine.

Want to read up before you come? Start with Literary Oaxaca.

Want to see more of Oaxaca beyond the city? Here are the day trips and tours I recommend most.