Page 11 - Eternal San Miguel de Allende

FOREWORD
Sacred Spaces
Is there a word for falling in love with a house? If there is, I don’t know it, in English or Spanish or any other tongue. But I am certain there should be. Sometimes it’s provoked by the orange-peel scent of a morning, or a slice of sky seen from the crack of a shuttered
window, the shiver of a tree branch in rain. Sometimes it’s the filigree of a transom, an alcove dappled with moss, a flood of weathered tiles, the song an iron gate sings when shoved open, a flight of stone steps worn down the center from centuries of shoes, the arabesque of a brass doorknob in the palm. These things leave me thrumming like a guitar. For me, houses have always been infinitely more alluring than any suitor.
I want to call this sensation duende, or soul, for lack of a better translation. Ted Davis has managed to capture a most elusive prey. The ephemeral. And for this, we should duly thank him. He has titled this collection Eternal San Miguel de Allende, but the San Miguel he has focused his lens on is actually the vanishing San Miguel, the one dissolving before our eyes.
My favorite wall on Calle Pila Seca, the one freckled with age, last week was destroyed with a coat of flat, yellow paint. The popular pharmacy where the locals lined up for shots of vitamin B on their behinds is history; the señora pharmacist, famous for administering these piquetes, decided to close, urged by kin to sell. The building with the Noah’s ark of animals and the star of David on its facade, built by Jewish refugees during the 1940’s, has been divided into fufurufo boutiques with a food court like any U.S. mall.
Are we too late? There’s no way to withhold change. But for a moment, time stands still. Ted Davis has managed to charm the owners of these establishments and smuggle us into interiors so that we might peer into the past. Davis recognizes these places are transcendent, and perhaps this is why the homeowners trust him. And like Eugene Atget, who recorded vanishing Paris for posterity, Davis documents a San Miguel that is disappearing.
The images in this collection allow us to admire what is essentially San Miguelense, what is beautiful even as it is dying, or perhaps what is beautiful because it is dying. What a luxury to be ushered into forbidden San Miguel, to step over the high threshold of a door within a door, and stand in the darkness of the zaguán, the throat of the house, with its damp breath of stone and earth.
I consider these sites sacred spaces, as gloriously ravaged as a decaying Venetian palazzo, a brilliant radiance released before it fades. It is not nostalgia captured here, but something that resonates and hums long after, like a monastery bell.
San Miguel de Allende has many stories to tell. Some are secret. Some Ted Davis shares here. But for now, let the photographs speak in their language, which defies translation.
—Sandra Cisneros San Miguel de Allende
BY SANDRA CISNEROS
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