Bienvenidos a Maclovio Rojas, Baja, Mexico

WEST GATE TO MACLOVIO ROJAS. 6 1/2" x 24" curved film plane, paper negative, pinhole photograph. 1/17/00.

In early 1999, I was invited by Michael Schnorr, a founder of Border Art Workshop/Tallér de Arte Fronterízo, to come to the Centro Comunitario Aguascalientes in Maclovio Rojas to conduct a workshop on pin-hole photography for community members. The Aguascalientes community center was built as a project of BAW/TAF in 1997-98. I received a grant from Southwest Minnesota Arts and Humanities Council with McKnight Foundation funding to conduct the workshops here during January, 2000 and to do a photographic comparison of this community which is located approximately 12 miles east of Tijuana on Mexico Federal Highway 2 with the neighboring (across the border) communities of suburban San Diego. I chose east Chula Vista for the study because the two communities are just fifteen miles apart and in the same range of foothills. They are both experiencing rapid development but at opposite ends of the economic scale. That part of the project will have to wait for another time.

SATURDAY ENGLISH CLASS, 8 JANUARY 2000. 5" x 7" paper negative, pinhole photograph. 1/8/00.

Participants in the Maclovio Rojas workshops ranged in age from seven to thirty-something, but most of them were from ten to fifteen years old. Over three weekends, six different groups of people, a total of about thirty individuals, made cameras and took pictures. The first group was from this english class. They made 5 x 7 inch pin-hole cameras of cardboard. While their photos covered a variety of subjects, the most popular subject matter seemed to be self-portraits.

I worked with three different pin-hole cameras. The opening picture was taken with a 6 1/2" x 24" curved plane camera with a 10 inch focal length and radius. Great for panoramas. Most of my pictures were taken with a 4" x 5" view camera on Polaroidô 4x5 Type 55pn positive/negative film. This camera could be changed from wide angle to telephoto views. For portrait work, I use an old Polaroidô Super Shooter camera that I converted to pin-hole. It uses the 3 1/2 x 4 1/2 Type 665pn film packs. It has a fairly short focal length and so is a "fast" camera with the 50 ISO film (f/208, 12-16 second exposures in bright daylight). 2/1/00

As I went around taking pictures of the town, I had a number of people ask me to take their pictures. This worked out well because I could give them the print and keep the negative for future printing. Returning home, I began printing the pictures and found that the portraits were the most fascinating of the pictures taken in Maclovio Rojas. So here is:

A PORTRAIT OF MACLOVIO ROJAS

Robert Wilde, 2000-2001

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