PAGE | 1 | 2 |
Searching for backyard wrestlers, cholos, a scorpion belt, and the most blessed Virgin with Xavier Tavera
BY MOLLY PRIESMEYER
The man looks like a bulldog. Not that sweet, slobbering bulldog your grandma had when you were a kid, the cutie who'd lick the Popsicle goop from your sunburned forearms. No, this guy pressing through the doorway looks swollen with aggression.
His gargantuan head is mostly bald, save for the hours-old hair that has sprouted from the three-inch-thick skin rolls cascading down his neck. And though the man's girth causes him to waddle in his Adidas sandals, his fierce eyes say he has no time to waste. Still, he has something Xavier Tavera wants—a tattoo on his upper arm of praying hands. For weeks now, Tavera, a Minneapolis photographer, has been looking for just this image. So Tavera approaches the human bulldog as he exits Chihuahua Western Wear and Boots at Taquiera la Hacienda on Lake Street... and hopes for the best.
Today Tavera is at the Lake Street Mercado shooting photos for an upcoming book on religious iconography. He's also seeking out subjects for his latest photo and video exhibit, Artsourcing. The show features work made by the Latino artist collective Grupo Soap del Corazon (which includes Tavera and Douglas Padilla, among others) with the aid of immigrant labor, and will be on view at the Soap Factory through August 16.
When he first spots the man with the tattoo, Tavera, who otherwise is unflappable, widens his eyes and clears out of the man's path to the shirt section. "Did you see him?" Tavera whispers through his teeth. Even without the size factor, no one is likely to miss a guy wielding an imaginary bat of badass. "Did you see his tattoo?"
Next, Tavera asks the man, in Spanish, if he'll mosey around the back of the building, through the alley on Lake and Fourth, and pose for a picture. The man, who is named Miguel, smiles and humbly, even appreciatively, nods his head yes. It turns out that he possesses a timidity that belies his gigantic stature, like one of those tree frogs that can blow up to at least three times its own size if provoked.
Xavier Tavera
Nick Vlcek for City Pages
By contrast, Tavera has a disarming presence aided by a set of teeth that glow like fireflies. As is his custom, Tavera learns intimate details and hard-luck stories about this man's life, all in the space of five minutes. He learns that Miguel is from a Mexico City neighborhood about 30 minutes away from where Tavera himself grew up. He learns that when Miguel was four, he moved to Anaheim, California, where he later wound up in a gang and in trouble with the law. And he learns that Miguel abandoned L.A. a few years ago to get away from it all, relocating to Minneapolis with his wife and kids.
The blue-inked tattoo of praying hands, Miguel says, is in homage to his mom, who returned to Mexico years ago. "She's far away," he says. "But I still think about her all of the time." As he speaks, Miguel's big eyes dart around, from behind Tavera, to the alley, to busy Lake Street where car horns blast, and back again.
Tavera, a tall and lean 35-year-old with close-cropped hair, and an equally thin goatee, has spent a good chunk of the last 10 years doing just this—waylaying people he's never met, shooting their photo, and carving out a tiny piece of their story in the time it takes to capture their image. "I think of the camera as a passport," says Tavera. "[Photography] starts a dialogue. You learn about their lives. It's not just the final paper thing. It's all the stuff that happens: the sounds, the smells, the dialogue."
Like anyone with an obsession or even a tic, Tavera has a hard time explaining his need to document people and things. "The people I photograph, sometimes I do not like them," he admits. "But I am still curious about them. It's the same thing for people that are into cars," he says. "Like, I want to understand how a carburetor works."
Tavera's project isn't about exoticism or exposing the Other; it's about uncovering binding similarities. His lens magnifies the odd personal expressions people often wear as costumes or proclamations. (Tavera himself expresses a fear of wearing pajamas, the flannel representing an emblem of domesticity.) In search of these portents and totems, Tavera traipses down Lake Street, through east St. Paul, into tiny and cluttered psychic shops in south Minneapolis, and alongside the soccer games in Powderhorn Park, always with a camera around his neck. Every day, he asks strangers to give themselves to him.
Click on the thumbnails above to view the photographs by Xavier Tavera
Lately, Tavera has been intrigued by the things he finds on the street or in churches—icons that are often unintentionally theatrical or contradictory. Take Tavera's portrait of a church member from a south Minneapolis congregation. This bearded man in a homemade cream-colored frock has collapsed to the ground, landing on his right side in a twisted heap of anguish. He's playing a bloodied Jesus in a re-creation of the Pasión. The setting however, happens to be an asphalt parking lot, and Jesus is wearing black tennis shoes and a crown of rope.
This juxtaposition suits Tavera fine. He has been especially preoccupied recently with the transfer of religious imagery from Mexico to the States: gory images of Jesus and the hundreds of revered saints and virgins that appear on everything from car doors to soap bars. Which is how he wound up on Lake Street today in search of a tattoo of praying hands.
There's something of the flaneur in Tavera, the aimless pedestrian and urban observer, and there always has been. When Tavera was 10 years old, he snuck out of his Mexico City house during the afternoon of Mexican Independence Day. He pocketed his mom's cheap 110 film-format camera, and walked blocks away through busy city streets to an air show. That September 16th afternoon, he stood alone in the crowd, pulled out his mother's little camera, and pointed it toward the sunny sky. He snapped at least 10 pictures of planes that soared above the crowd in flock formation. Then Tavera headed home, quietly entered the house before anyone noticed he was gone, and returned his mom's camera to her dresser drawer.
Tavera wasn't an artist right away, though. He tried studying law in his native Mexico City with the hope of pursuing either civil or labor practice. He bailed, he says, when he realized that it was a path forked with corruption and payoffs, often instigated by shady police departments.
"Law as a theory is beautiful," Tavera says. "But once you get out there and work, it is horrendous."
So Tavera instead learned CAD (computer-aided design), and took a job doing drafting for a granite company, which brought him to the States a little more than a decade ago. After the company went bankrupt, he studied photography at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design for two years, opting out before he went bankrupt himself.
Though Tavera has taken probably 5,000 pictures since the air show nearly 25 years ago, he can't let go of the photos from that day, which are printed on thick, square paper that fits into his palm. The blue sky is muted—veiled as if by diesel fumes or the slushy skein that collects on Minnesota curbs in early spring. And the planes, only slightly larger than the dust specks, are so grainy and far away they could be ink smears or wriggling bass fry.
When his mother had the pictures developed a few weeks after the air show, Tavera landed in deep trouble. "This is expensive!" she scolded him. "Why are you taking pictures of mosquitoes in the sky?" He told her he liked their movement.
"They think it's funny," Tavera says of his parents' reaction to his penchant for documentary-style photography. "They have seen and smelled and tasted everything that has come their way. But I don't think they understand what I do. I can hardly understand it."
In nearly every picture Tavera has of his dentist parents, the couple is laughing. Why is their own son asking them to stand in front of a crucifix or huddle near saints or plastic virgin dolls that are more at home wiggling on top of sun-cracked dashboards? And why is he asking them to don sequined wrestling masks?
While Tavera says the camera is a passport, for him it is also a shield and a telescope. While growing up in Mexico City, he was mugged five times. Knives were used on some occasions, fists and legs on others. He lost a pair of cheap sneakers from his feet, watches, a bicycle, a bottom tooth. No one in his family had ever experienced anything like it. Tavera began to wonder if bad luck trailed him. He didn't understand how or why he was a target for violence.
"If you are scared, then don't go outside," Tavera's mother told him. "But just remember: There are earthquakes in Mexico City, and the roof could fall on your head."
So Tavera ventured outdoors again, often with his camera around his neck or in tow, confronting people before they could confront him.
Click on the thumbnails above to view the photographs by Xavier Tavera
| 1 | 2 |
About Molly Priesmeyer
From the Archive
- Is This Thing On? Duplomacy struggle with stage fright and fear of a Willie Nelson fan (Music - Jul 5, 2006)
- Hold Your Breath and Count to One Million How an Uptown condo conversion turned a basement into an OSHA hazard (News - Jun 28, 2006)
- Phoenix: It's Never Been Like That (CD Review - Jun 21, 2006)
- This Land Is Our Land Children's Hospital snatches up housing in the city's Phillips West neighborhood (News - May 17, 2006)
- Story of the Sea, Come on Down! Minneapolis rockers can't find their way to skid row—but there's a spot for them in front of the telly (Music - May 10, 2006)
- The Vestals: Songs About Girls...And Other Mysteries (CD Review - May 3, 2006)
- Number 26 Fifteen-year-old Gary Parker was the 26th of Minneapolis's 49 homicides last year—and one of the 54 percent of black male victims whose killings went unsolved. (Cover Story - Apr 12, 2006)
- Uncover Me A tour of Twin Cities weird with musician Mike Gunther (Music - Apr 12, 2006)
- More articles from the Molly Priesmeyer Archive...
