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Around Halloween, it’s not uncommon to see people donning Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) style makeup. For those who observe the holiday—which originated in Mexico and is celebrated each year on November 1—the makeup means much more than a costume. The calaveras (skulls) that appear everywhere help to define what the holiday is all about: honoring the dead and celebrating their lives in a positive way.
A few years ago, Pittsburgh-based photographer Tom Cwenar was working on a project in Albuquerque, New Mexico, when he was introduced to some amazing local artists that were working on intriguing Dia de los Muertos-themed work. After several more trips out to New Mexico, Tom met a gallery owner who specialized in the Day of the Dead artwork, and he immediately knew that he wanted to get involved in some way to do a shoot.
I approached Johnny Salas, owner of the Santisima gallery, and asked if he needed any help with some advertising. It was at that point I got my friend Dave Vissat, who is a creative director at Brunner Works in Pittsburgh involved and we came up with some pretty cool collaborative ideas.
After discussing ideas, Johnny ended up giving Tom total creative freedom to do a poster campaign for the gallery. The resulting street photography-inspired photographs show the “emotion and pride” of the people in Albuquerque’s South Valley Dia de Los Muertos Marigold Parade have for the holiday.
We had many ideas in advance, that we more or less used as guidelines. We knew that all bets would be off once I starting shooting as we didn’t want the work to look produced. I had my assistant and the creative director looking for things that caught their eyes while I started wandering around shooting.
Since the project was spontaneous in nature, there was little pre-production involved. Johnny was able to point Tom and his team in the right direction, since he was familiar with the parade and the attendees.
One of the main challenges was that this is a very special and personal tradition for the people involved. Blending in was important. I wanted to be able to connect and be approachable—we needed to fit in. I decided to hire some local artists to paint our faces with their traditional look. This turned out to be a huge advantage. It’s was much easier to approach people to ask if I could take their portrait during this special day by blending is as a local.
For Tom, the project was an opportunity to work on something that was a little less “buttoned up” than his typical client work at Cwenar Studios, a chance to keep his process “fresh.”
On this project I enjoyed being out of my comfort zone and letting the spontaneous nature of this idea create my inspiration and opportunities. The spirit of this project reminded me more of something that I would have done back in art school … pushing the creative is always my goal and this project refreshed that notion.
Tom was recently awarded a Gold National Addy award for the Dia de los Muertos project, and he’s been overwhelmed by the response to the photos. He says the nature of the images naturally attract attention and interest, and he was honored to help people learn a little more about the Mexican Holiday.