More Real
On a rangefinder camera, you focus by aligning two pictures — the camera’s projection of what’s in front of you against the actual reality. You turn the focus ring on your lens until slowly, the two panes merge into a sharp picture. I was reminded of this whilst traveling on a bus in Mexico, looking through the window at the landscape going by.
For years, Mexico had exerted a special fascination on me, a country a couldn’t wait to visit, and now I was finally seeing it with my own eyes.
It’s one of the most fascinating aspects of travel: that process of aligning the image in your head with the reality on the ground. I had envisioned Mexico to be colorful, hot, North American without being North American. I derived those images almost exclusively from books and photos, little impressionistic fragments I pieced together to a vague idea. Walking the streets of Mexico City, those ideas collided with reality. They weren’t wrong, but the experience felt like looking through the rangefinder. My picture was slightly off: Reality was less fantastical, dustier and grittier, but also all the more wonderful because it was so concrete. Crickets chirped. My living room plant existed as a mighty tree. Taco stands on every corner. Such lovely people. Yellow walls. So many dogs. Nothing is ever quite how you imagined, because it’s so much more than you could possibly take into account.
The schoolgirls, looking inquisitively. The hummingbird, blazing by. The low, rectangular buildings, hand-drawn signs. All the food, familiar yet never before seen.
The images in my head have been replaced by these impressions, but I can’t help but want to go back, soak up more of them, and see more of the grit, variety, humidity, and overall intensity Mexico has to offer.
It’s become more real, and with that all the more alluring.
