Tonantzin

Tonantzin, a Náhuatl word literally meaning “our mother”, refers to a Mayan deity associated with ‘Mother Earth’. This deity was co-opted by the Spanish colonisers, who replaced her directly with the Guadalupe, or Virgin Mary, to ease the transition to Catholicism. The series follows characters across Latin America who are searching the soil for things lost or desirable - precious stones, old forms of agriculture, the bones of missing relatives. Through these characters, I hope to document the complex and changing relationship between the human race and the soil that sustains it. Shot on 4x5 film, these 9 images are a small selection from an ongoing project, taken across two sustainable farming projects in Mexico and Guatemala.