Oaxaca
Oaxaca is a beautiful colonial town in southern Mexico. It has a busy town square and very interesting churches. The food is fabulous. It is famous for Alebrijes, fantastical brightly colored carvings of imaginary creatures. Next to Oaxaca is the vast archaeological site, Monte Alban. Monte Alban, a field of monumental structures, was the center of Zapotec culture for about 1000 years beginning around 500 BC. The Zapotec people are native to this site and are neither Incas nor Aztecs. Stone figures of their gods display enormous artistic sophistication.
These photos were taken in 1997 with Fuji Velvia film and a Contax T2 camera. The Contax was a high quality, lightweight 35 mm camera that I thoroughly enjoyed. The negatives of these two shots were scanned by Bay Photo and tiff files were produced. Those files were denoised and upscaled using Topaz Labs Photo AI since it is not limited to raw files.
This is an image of Pitao Cosobi, the Zapotec god of maize and sustenance. I was just coming down from one of the monuments when a local man showed me the entrance to a subterranean tomb. He gestured for me to go down a ladder into the black tomb. Using a shiny piece of metal he reflected sunlight through the tomb opening onto this figure. I took the shot from in the tomb.
This incredible stone mask is Cocijo, the god of rain, thunder and lightning. It can be seen in a partially excavated, but covered site near Oaxaca in Lambityeco.