One of Mexico’s best-known photographers reveals how the pilgrimage of the Virgin of Guadalupe changed her view on life forever, not only behind the lens of her camera but also throughout her life.
Monica Guerrero Mouret (Mexico City 1962) has become one of the most exposed photographers outside her country. Museographer, curator, promoter of Mexican crafts and arts in Mexico, Central and South America, the United States, Europe and Arab countries, her life has always been full of images.
Pictures for a mother without her sight
“When I was ten years old, my mother lost her sight,- Monica confesses. – We were then six siblings, a newborn, then came the seventh. I think that from then on I started to want to record all the scenes to show them to my mother one day”. Finally, after a long process, her mother recovered her sight. The photos of her daughter allowed her to relive the images that her eyes had been unable to perceive during those sightless years. Today she is 82 years old and healthy enough to take the car without permission.
This is how Monica’s passion for images was born; and while growing professionally, her spirit was entering a tremendous inner struggle.
“For years I’ve lived in an eternal questioning about God, because I’ve always been a rebel. In my family we were used to praying together, but there are moments in my life full of silences from God, of unexplainable circumstances in which I became angry with the Lord”.
A change in life
Monica’s life changed in the most unusual way when she least expected it. It was her birthday and she was on her way home in the Mexican capital, driving her car, where she was expected for the celebration. When she least expected it, in her desperation, she was stuck in traffic. A large group of pilgrims on their way to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe stopped the traffic.
The pilgrimage
This is how Monica remembers the moment that would change her existence forever: “I shouted annoyingly to the traffic officer to please get them out of the way, that I wouldn’t make it to my party. The officer didn’t know whether to laugh in my face or arrest me for being crazy. There were thousands of children, old people, men, women, priests… walking. And I wanted to go through. I was very silly, really silly.
“I don’t know how, but my pride was tempered by the officer’s half smile – she remembers -. The proud Monica ran into a wall of pilgrims. I got out of the car, I grabbed my camera and started taking pictures of faces full of tears, rough hands holding rosaries, dirty feet, children with their images of The Virgin of Guadalupe. In the end I never made it to my birthday party, I changed directions and followed them. I had a thousand questions to ask those people who were walking: Where are they going? Why are they walking? What’s their purpose?”
That’s how Monica discovered her calling as an artist: to immortalize in images the heart of the photographed. Monica conceived the multidisciplinary exhibition “From Pilgrim to Pilgrim”, which transmits through photographs, video, object art, installation and sculpture of the tree of life, the various manifestations of Mexican culture through the people as “pilgrims”.
The exhibition features hundreds of colorful and vivid images, which narrate the history of the pilgrimage tradition in Mexico, with its thousands of individual passages. Stories that deserve to be seen and shared by different viewers, dignifying Mexico’s pilgrimage tradition in the world.
“From Pilgrim to Pilgrim”
The exhibition, and its corresponding book, began its own pilgrimage in the same Basilica of Guadalupe, in 2013. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Mexico chose the exhibition to be presented in the consulates and embassies of the United States, South and Central America and Europe.
An exhibition, but above all, a caress for the heart of those who look at the images. “Two days after the opening of my exhibition a couple came up to me and the man, who could not see, said: ‘Are you Monica? I heard your story on TV and that’s why I’m here in the Villa of Guadalupe. I would like for you to describe your work, tell me about your photographs, I want to ‘see’ them”.
“I took him by the hands and tried to tell him through smells, sensations and emotions every image. Knowing that my work can be appreciated not only with the eyes, but with all the senses, is one of the greatest satisfactions I have ever had,” explains Monica.
Among the most unforgettable moments of the pilgrimage that this exhibition is making around the world, Monica mentions in particular the one organized in front of the wall between Mexico and the United States.
“The exhibition was my public thanks to the Virgin of Guadalupe and to my country – she claims-. It’s an act of solidarity with our migrant brothers who are going to a destination and in it they don’t go alone, She [The Virgin] accompanies them. To exhibit on the wall is to remind the world that this exhibition is a harmony with a new musical note ‘Faith major’; my images are a breath of faith and love for the pilgrims and migrant brothers and sisters, because their smiles, looks, bare feet, flowers, songs, clothing and prayers unite us to the same Mother“, she says.
Pilgrimage and mexican crafts
In addition to the photographic exhibition in which Monica takes the pilgrims by the hand, dignifying their journey, always having as a guiding thread the respect for their integrity and their faith, “From Pilgrim to Pilgrim” promotes the Mexican crafts made by many of the pilgrims who are also artisans.
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This article was written by Matilde Latorre and published on 27/02/20 in Aleteia. This reproduction and its photographs are published with the permission of Monica Guerrero Mouret.