buried mirror: latest reflections

This photo of a furniture deliveryman on the streets of Antigua, Guatemala, comes from Michael R. Swigart’s photostream. .

This view of Agua Volcano from somewhere near the Parqueo Central in Antigua, Guatemala, is from hexod.us’ photostream. .

Here’s another image by our mystery photographer (see also the past two days’ posts). What’s going on here? (Hint: the picture documents a subject for which the photographer is well known.) Who is he? What is the approximate date of the photo? .

Come, come, I know I have some readers. Surely someone can guess the famous photographer of yesterday’s image. Okay, maybe this will help. Here’s another photo by the same lensman. Who is it? What is it? When was it? Someone has to know the answer!

Here’s an image from Guatemala. Can anyone guess the subject, photographer, or approximate date the picture was taken?

112 more like this at En Antigua. via el Blogador .

Worry people are small, rather crude (but charming) dolls, usually sold in batches of several in a bag or box. As far as I know they are particular to the Maya of highland Guatemala. Children put them under their pillows at night as a sleep aid. Tradition — or the vendors of the dolls — [...]

Two videos via Carpe Diem, the blog of Luis Figueroa.

Chichicastenango market, from gepiblu’s photostream.

Paramañana paints one of the more recognizable portraits of La Antigua, Guatemala, that I have seen in a while (of course, the best portraits are from steady bloggers like Rudy Giron, El Blogador, and Luis Figueroa). After a little getting used to, you don’t really notice the no tap water or no electricity situation any [...]

  This photo was taken a long time ago in Aguas Calientes, near La Antigua, Guatemala. The town is known for its beautiful textiles. Back in the day it was a quiet and tranquil place. I wonder if it has changed much.

Fuego volcano, near Antigua, Guatemal, erupted in November. Inner Diablog posted a photo by Aldo Bonilla, or you can follow some of these google image results (click screenshot).

You can hardly go wrong with Antigua, but Rudy Girón goes the extra mile. Every day he posts a new photo from the city, along with some pretty interesting commentary. Some of his favorite topics are food, architecture, and signage, but really nothing is out of bounds. Well worth checking out (click iamge below).

In 1677 three nuns arrived in Antigua from Peru. They had been sent to establish a Carmelite convent in the then Guatemalan capital. A few years later, building began on the church of Santa Teresa, where the foreign nuns and their new local sisters would be based; construction was completed in 1687. Unfortunately, thirty years [...]

Antigua’s distinctive architecture is not all in a single style, yet a certain spirit seems somehow common to each of the examples. Elaborate facades such as that of La Merced (shown) have been called churrigueresque (a term indicating elaborate symmetrical ornamentation). Other writers have called Antigua’s architecture hispano-indigena. But S.D. Markman, in his excellent Colonial [...]

One of the great festivals in Guatemala is Semana Santa in Antigua. On Easter celebrants bear heavy floats depicting images from the passion of Christ; the floats, some requiring dozens of carriers, may weigh thousands of pounds. Elaborate carpets — alfombras – of pine needles, corn kernels, flowers, and sawdust are created on the cobbled [...]

During the fiesta of Santo Tomas (Dec. 21), in Chichicastenango in the Guatemalan highlands, extremely tall pine poles are consecrated and erected in the plaza for the ceremony of the palo volador — the flying pole. Pole dancers climb in pairs to the top via platforms and ropes, and then they spin at the end [...]

The church of La Merced is one of the most distinctive in Antigua. Its history is strongly marked by earthquakes. Originally built in the mid-sixteenth century, it was destroyed and rebuilt several times until assuming more or less its present shape in the eighteenth century. Perhaps its most striking feature, its churrigueresque facade, was added [...]

Many years ago we lived in this little house in Mixco, on the outskirts of Guatemala City. The house was near the police checkpoint at the edge of town, where the road to Antigua (as I recollect you got there along Avenida Roosevelt) began to leave the broad Guate valley and wind up the bucolic [...]

Flying giant kites on Nov. 1 is a tradition in Santiago Sacatepequez, Guatemala.

This year’s presidential elections are the deadliest since the 1980s. Frontrunner Alvaro Colom has called his chief opponent, Otto Perez Molina, an idiot. Perez Molina has called Colom a thief. Meanwhile, “the electorate is tremendously skeptical.” And people keep dying. Francisco Goldman is releasing a book that implicates general Perez Molina in the murder of [...]

Thanks to Rudy of La Antigua Guatemala Daily Photo for pointing out “Zacatenango” by Francis Dávila, part of a compilation of electronic music from Guatemala. The compilation can be downloaded here. The image was taken in Antigua in December 2001. Here’s “Zacatenango”:

Tigre fe54 has a nice set of door knocker photos from Antigua, Guatemala, at his flickr site. Clickable thumbnails appear below, via the Crossroads plugin.

Rudy Giron at Antigua Daily Photo posted the photo above of a wall in Antigua. He makes the point that “the flavor in life is found in the little details.” The stop (alto) signs in Antigua are made of ceramic tiles in metal frames. Below is a photo I took in Antigua near the church [...]

At Antigua Guatemala Daily Photo, Rudy Giron has posted about the Bagel Barn, which offers coffee, bagels, and free WiFi. How times have changed. When I was teaching in Guate — there was no internet, so don’t even think about WiFi — we once got so desperate for bagels (nowhere to be found in the [...]