Mexico: A Higher Vision -- an Aerial Journey from Past to Present.

• Author: Mujica, Barbara

Great works of art defy description, and the nearly two hundred photographs by Michael Calderwood that fill Mexico: A Higher Vision are indeed great works of art. Produced over a period of 425 flying hours, these breath-taking scenes reveal a Mexico in which nature and civilization, order and chaos, color and shadow are constantly at odds. Lush forests, deep purple plains, multihued fishing boats, polluted cities--these images seem to contradict and complement one another at the same time. Seen as a whole, Calderwood's photos create an impression of excess. The waters of the Gulf are so blue, the Chihuahuan Plains so vast, the Sierra Madre so rugged, that the viewer is dizzied by the sheer exorbitance of Mexico's natural beauty.

In his highly poetic introduction Carlos Fuentes writes, "To see Mexico from the air is to look upon the face of creation. Our everyday, earthbound vision takes flight and is transformed into a vision of the elements. This book is a portrait of water and fire, of wind and earthquake, of the moon and the sun." Fuentes goes on to relate this "vision of the elements of creation in simultaneous interplay" to ancient Mexican cosmogony, in which five suns presided over natural phenomena. Indeed, these photographs do give the viewer a sense of the power and continuity of natural forces. Human beings seem to be, as the Aztecs believed, a rather insignificant part of a vast totality. Even in the cityscapes, people are invisible. They have created sprawling, colorful cities, but these lie in the shadows of huge mountains or in the midst of luxuriant forests that assert their dominance over everything man-made. Humans have left their mark, of course--in the soccer field squeezed between factory walls in Monterrey, in a seaside villa on the cliffs on Careyes, in the pyramids and apartment buildings that stand side by side in Tlatelolco, in the huge office...