This photographic series tries to capture through icons and dualities the Mexican magic realism composed of religious aspects, beliefs, manners, styles and ways of life, as well as the postmodern "look" of an underdeveloped and oneiric country. Likewise, it reveals the symbols and images that can influence the form in which we develop, and how this development turns into tradition. And how this tradition influences the generations that follow.

It explores how the figure of the baby Jesus as it represents the Christmas birth manages to influence a person to have children and sometimes give the child Jesus' name. Icons that are not icons, but, realities. Or the difference between these. Now comes ... the understanding of the Mexican saying ... they remain to dress Saints!. It is also a search of the dualities that the human being tends to form for natural instinct, which I, when shooting my camera found when I was compromising myself with the loved one. The symbols that guide the young Mexican couple to religious marriage, that is to say, to the altar.

These symbols wrap and shape the traditional concept of love, marriage, procreation, and tradition, (or love, procreation and marriage), as well as the idea of sharing, finding yourself, to undertake and to be a part of your other one, or of someone very similar and equivalent to you. Images that the Mexican is exposed to and influenced by in his development as a person. How the elements that bind the customs and the reality of the family, aspects that shape a rather magic reality, aspects that, without losing their surreal nature, shape a routine way of life of a vivacious culture.

This photographic series was taken in Mexico City and in the village of Tepoztlán, at the beginning of 2002. It does not try to be a sociologically formal study on religion, customs and family, but rather, a fleeting reflection of religion, customs and family; a visual essay that shows an existing world to us; or a graphical poem about my personal experience in Mexico a little time after the birth of my daughter Julieta. This project was realized thanks to the physical, economic and emotional support of my Jonah Roll, to whom with all my love I dedicate Icons and Dualities.