Iteration and Series

PHOTOS FROM THE ARTIST’S BOOK PLAYA

In Doing Visual Ethnography (London: Sage, 2001), Sarah Pink argues that images must be considered in context, and in relationship to one another, in order for researchers to understand their anthropological significance. Single images, in other words, don’t tell the whole story. Playa features four series of photographs taken on the beach in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. Each series observes the process of a single quotidian activity: raking trash from the sand, setting up beach chairs in anticipation of off-loading cruise ships, gutting a fish, closing up a street shop. The book’s text is printed on translucent paper that overlays each image series, and incorporates a variety of voices: the autobiographical, quotations from interviews, references to ethnographic theory. The texts explore the relationship between tourists and locals, vacation and labor, resort and workplace – all in the context of spring break week in a Mexican resort town.