[en] August: Between the Rain and the Fallen Leaves

The August project was born from a walk through a forest near Valle de Bravo. It was a damp summer, with constant rain, and I supposed the ground would be full of mushrooms. With the idea of capturing the details of the fungi I would find, I chose a medium format camera (Hasselblad 500c/m), a short 80mm lens and a long 250mm one, and a single roll of color film (Kodak Ektar 100), limited to 16 exposures in 645 format. There wasn't much margin: one or two shots per mushroom, which meant leaving out others I found later on the trail. Even so, I felt I managed to gather representative examples of what the forest had to offer.

While photographing, I discovered another limitation. The lenses didn't allow me to get as close as I would have liked, which led me to also include part of the immediate environment in the images. The texture of the leaf litter, the moisture of the wood, and the dim light of the undergrowth became an essential part alongside the mushrooms.

At that moment, I had no idea what species I was seeing. I just walked attentively, intrigued by the diversity of shapes and colors. It was when I developed the roll that the curiosity to research them arose, and I understood that identifying them is not simple. There are varieties that are very similar to each other, differences that are only revealed with a microscope, and species that can be edible or toxic depending on small details. That difficulty ended up being part of this month's learning experience.

These nine images do not pretend to name or classify, but to show. White, red, scaly mushrooms, on shelves or in clusters: they are all part of a living system that renews itself with the rain. More than certainties, what they leave are questions and glimpses, small reminders of the hidden richness in the damp soils of the forest.