Rice University photographer Geoff Winningham captures this surreal mixture of pagan festivals and Catholic rituals. The pictures range from solemn to humorous, from violent to tranquil. We see images of fireworks exploding around a cathedral at dawn. Another photograph features two men dressed in red and yellow jaguar suits fighting furiously in front of a local crowd. Preparations for the festivals are elaborate, and sometimes grotesque.
People make their own costumes, helmets, shields and candles.
They slaughter the animals they cook. One Winningham picture shows a skinned head of a bull lying under a picture of the Virgin Mary while a child rests in a nearby hammock. Different dance groups appear in the book, some dressed as goats, others as tigers, still others in burlap sacks and straw sombreros. Winningham, a professor of art and art history at Rice, began photographing the fiestas in 1984, going to different villages in central and southern Mexico. He developed close relationships with Indian families and local officials, which gave him access to different phases of the festivals.