Photo Essay: Mexico Narco
Teun Voeten shares stunning images from his book "Drug War Mexico;" his next project is about fentanyl U.S.A.
Your email might truncate this photo essay. You can see it in full on www.crashoutmedia.com Warning - This photo essay includes images of murder scenes
A teenage girl with a rifle strapped onto her chest and pair of cell phones on her belt takes a cigarette break in Michoacán, Mexico. A drug addict injects product into his neck in a canal in Tijuana. A man in a sombrero gets shot in the head; moments later his lifeless body is sprawled out and his trail of fresh blood sinks into the concrete.
Dutch anthropologist and photo journalist Teun Voeten has covered conflict for decades in almost every hotspot on the planet: Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Rwanda, Liberia, Chechnya, Gaza. But he keeps getting drawn back to Mexico, the undeclared war, the paradox of a country that stumbles on with a booming capital city and beach resorts while cartel paramilitaries fight raging battles with the army and there have been over 400,000 murders since 2006
Teun’s book “Drug War Mexico / Narco Violencia” is packed with his tragic yet beautiful photos of this conflict and the pained but spirited life around it. Many are from when President Felipe Calderón launched a military crackdown on cartels and the battle became known to the world. But the brand new edition has photos into the 2020s, when the conflict is old and getting less headlines yet the body count just piles up.
He frames the murder scenes as pretty portraits; it gives me pause seeing the gruesomeness of killing with the art of the photographer. He also captures the mundaity of the endless shootings, the cops and soldiers and forensics teams and residents around them, loitering, talking, joking.
Teun captures the vigorous life in the cities scarred by violence too. It’s not all fighting. Or not quite. A girl paints her face as a Catrina for Day of the Dead. A man blasts into a trombone with a banda at a grave. A woman serves up beer and mezcal under the twilight bulbs of a cantina. People stumble on through the days. Narco Mexico.
I have known Teun for many years, and we met up last week and he gave me a copy, below. It also has essays by Javier Valdez, the acclaimed Sinaloa journalist who was murdered in 2017, and by anthropologist Howard Campbell. If you want to buy one, you can reach out to Teun directly on: teunvoeten@gmail.com
Teun described his new project to me that I can’t wait to see. He is giving the same treatment to the fentanyl crisis that has killed hundreds of thousands in the United States and Canada and is leaking into Europe. For some reason, his backers were less enthusiastic about supporting a book on drug deaths north of the border, so he is crowd funding it. He is almost there, so if you want to help him reach his goal in the ten days that are left then fire away. Here is the link.
In the meantime, check out these photos. I hope soon these images of Mexico’s undeclared war will be history not current affairs. But I fear we have many more years of the bloodshed and tragedy before we can claim it’s all over.
Copyright Ioan Grillo and CrashOut Media 2024
There has always been an interesting debate about the use of black and white versus color in war photography and other violent and culturally disturbing subject matters. Proponents of black and white say black and white focuses you on the immediate brutality without any emotional sentiment except the extreme brutality. Proponents of color say when people see such violence and brutality in the frame of what they see normally (color) provides a shock and immediate revulsion to what is happening in their color universe. Color gives a sense of romanticism which is immediately gone when you realize what you are viewing. Black and white will not give you the contrast of that romanticism. It strips the image down to the essence of its form and texture in in this case to the brutality and violence. Since black and white is rarely featured in entertainment and photography, black and white may be more shocking because of the impact people are not used to.
A photographer could always check with a simple conversion of the image from color to black and white and determine exactly what emotional effect you want to achieve. The choice may result in a photo that has huge impact.
It's cool that he's been to all those war torn countries before he reminds me of sabastian junger he's a well known war photographer that directed restrepo . A documentary about American infantryman fighting in Afghanistan. Fun fact mathew heineman the director that directed cartel land said he modeled his film after restrepo. Except junger was at least inbeded with professional troops heineman inbeded himself with angry untrained vigilantes