Ongoing Photographic Research (Visual essay series)
Mexico City
2022 - present
This project began in the historic center of Mexico City, near El Zócalo, where Spanish colonizers in the 16th century dismantled Mexica ceremonial temples and erected their own institutional buildings atop the ruins. These original structures, built from stone and charged with symbolic and religious meaning, were reduced to rubble—then reused as the raw material for a new colonial order. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, as modern infrastructure projects transformed the city, remnants of these buried temples continued to resurface—material testaments to the deep, often concealed legacy upon which modern Mexico is built.
Approaching the city as an amateur archaeologist, I wander through its streets, uncovering quiet traces of this layered history embedded within the urban fabric I inhabit. These encounters challenge traditional notions of the “ruin” in architectural discourse, revealing a built environment in constant flux—one that is continuously reconstructed through the accumulation of memory, power, and erasure.