Guatemala
This exploration is about our
cultural place-making and its resulting spatial quality. It is about how modern society, as
a global culture, has lost its way in terms of crafting our built space. There is no more
craft but only the production of objects serving our existence with little regard to
personal and sensitive qualities important to the formation of living space and hence our
well being as a community.
Since 1984, my efforts with photography have been to record and express the way of life for the rural people of Guatemala. As a photographer and planner, I travel through the towns and villages of Guatemala to seek out components that stimulate a heightened sense of dynamics for community vitality. This topic is two fold. First are the stimuli that are the influences imported in from other cultures that assist, whether negative or positive, in the evolution of the culture and the related community form. Secondly, there are indigenous components of communities that are rich with life and spatial qualities that are, or need to be durable in the face of pressures seeking to effect a change.
Photography allows me the chance to compare and reveal relationships of value, conditions conducive to the forming of livable built environments that make up our communities. Understanding the drivers of our social response in architectural form, and how function and form intertwine with social structures, helps me to understand the models that give life and health to a community.
Since 1984, my efforts with photography have been to record and express the way of life for the rural people of Guatemala. As a photographer and planner, I travel through the towns and villages of Guatemala to seek out components that stimulate a heightened sense of dynamics for community vitality. This topic is two fold. First are the stimuli that are the influences imported in from other cultures that assist, whether negative or positive, in the evolution of the culture and the related community form. Secondly, there are indigenous components of communities that are rich with life and spatial qualities that are, or need to be durable in the face of pressures seeking to effect a change.
Photography allows me the chance to compare and reveal relationships of value, conditions conducive to the forming of livable built environments that make up our communities. Understanding the drivers of our social response in architectural form, and how function and form intertwine with social structures, helps me to understand the models that give life and health to a community.
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