Amidst paths

One of the remarkable features of the photographic collection of Anita Jones is the rich amplitude of themes depicted: landscapes, botany, traditional markets, textiles, vernacular architecture, local festivities, trades and crafts, and many other themes found in the daily life of the indigenous peoples both in their communities and in the urban context. Anita was self-taught in photography and anthropological investigation and along with her husband Roy Jones, they founded in the 1940s the Hotel Oaxaca Courts (now known as Hotel Misión de los Ángeles). Over the course of many years, her interests were guided and nourished by the hundreds of researchers and professionals that would reside in their establishment. She came to know the likes of naturalists such as Tomas MacDougall, the Cordys (experts in Mesoamerican textiles), archaeologists like John Paddock, anthropologists such as Gertrude Blom, among many others who shared their knowledge and passions with her. With many of them, Anita would form lifelong friendships.

The majority of Anita’s photos were taken between the 1950s and the mid 1970s and focus on the state of Oaxaca, although there are also photos from Guerrero, Puebla, Chiapas, and Guatemala. Anita would travel to very remote towns by foot, by horse, in her jeep, or in light aircraft, accompanied by friends and even hotel guests to see and document the customs of towns frequently overlooked by academia in those years. Notable trips include the Chontal, Triqui, and Afro-Mexican regions. In this last one, Anita took the only photographs of Afro-Mexican weavers that we are aware of, together with Francis Bristol, one of her closest friends and frequent travel companion. Given the closeness of the two, Francis’ collection of textiles and photographs (now housed in the Logan Museum of Beloit College) forms a complimentary collection to that of Anita.

Born in Tampico in 1916 of Dutch ancestry, Anita passed away in 2005 in her house located in San Felipe del Agua, Oaxaca. Her daughter-in-law, Elsa Moreno de Jones, graciously decided to donate the photographs to the Textile Museum of Oaxaca (MTO) in 2017. After stabilizing, inventorying, and scanning the collection that consists of more than 4,000 slides and other photographic materials, the MTO was able to ensure their preservation and open consultation. It should be noted that a large number of the slides were taken with Ektachrome film and were on the verge of being lost due to a process of chemical decomposition, turning these images almost completely red.

Despite a lack of a specific theme in Anita’s work, she would always manage to find the most interesting and unexpected aspects of the place that she would find herself in; taking her time to find the best way to frame her shot. The result is a corpus of photographs that are distinguished for their great documentary value in the ample sense of the everyday life of the peoples of Oaxaca; taken with the patience and passion of a person that valued the multiplicity of the human experience.