The amber glow of the San Miguel de Allende streetlights hitting the cobblestones often lingers in the minds of its visitors long after they have left. The ancient tiled domes of its churches, the ornate black and white suits of the mariachis in the central plaza, and the colorful skirts of the giant mojiganga puppets that wander the downtown are all common visions of this quaint, colonial town in Central Mexico.
But mental snapshots fade with time, and many desire the ability to peruse those images now and again, even if absent from San Miguel. The new large-format photography book, “San Miguel de Allende: The Soul of Mexico,” offers San Miguel fans just such an opportunity.
Published by U.S.-based Schiffer Publishing, the book is a love letter to the Bajío city from Cathi and Steven House, two architects whose 35-year love affair with San Miguel is demonstrated in the warm and heartrending images they have photographed over the decades, unaware that one day they would combine their photographic archives into this homage to their part-time home.
When the Houses first came to San Miguel in 1990, they were pulled in by the city’s beauty and color. They had plans to move elsewhere but were shown a crumbling ruin of a house on Calzada de la Presa that they simply could not walk away from.
“When we stepped inside, we had that kind of overwhelming sensation that the angels had brought us to that spot,” says Cathi House. “Even after all the times we’ve tried to talk about it, [it’s hard to describe] what we felt, we just knew that we were home in a way that we really had not experienced yet in our life.”
The Houses built their home on that very spot, a quiet retreat from what they call their chaotic life in San Francisco. As time went on, they found themselves more and more interwoven into the local community and pulled to make San Miguel their part-time residence. When their home won a major architectural award, people started to reach out with requests to build other homes and Cathi put together “a construction team of some of the best people I have ever met.” As they sank deeper into their life in San Miguel, they started to capture its visual landscape through the lens of their cameras.
The new book, divided into eight sections of color photos and ink drawings, presents the architecture, gardens, homes, crafts and artisans of a town that has grown into a thriving artist community since the founding of the Escuela Universitaria de Bellas Artes and the Instituto Allende art schools in the early part of the 20th century.
Portraits of everyday residents — the time-etched faces of old women wrapped in rebozos, a young girl in her turquoise quiceañera dress, the giggling smiles of children — are almost exclusively taken by Steven, who Cathi says has a particular talent for making his subjects feel comfortable:
“Steven is tall, so he will come up to whoever [he wants to photograph] and immediately get not just down on his knees, but crouch even further. So he’s not this huge looming figure and he’ll just start talking to them in whatever language can be mustered. He’ll ask about everything — their children and the work they used to do or whatever, whatever topics seem appropriate as he engages with them.”
“And he always knows how to tell any little old lady, no matter how toothless or haggard or scraggly she might be, that she is the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen and make her believe it.”
“And this, this engagement that I watch with him, this dance that he does as a prelude to taking the photograph, is really beautiful. And it makes everyone relax and [makes them] happy and conversant and feeling like they know him now in a way. And so then, when he asks if it’s possible to take a photograph, they are so excited. And it’s been beautiful to watch over the years.”
Anyone who knows these two architects will recognize their other photography books, “Villages of West Africa: An Intimate Journey Across Time” and “Mediterranean Villages: An Architectural Journey,” but this is possibly the most intimate project they have ever worked on, an ode to a town that has become integral to the fabric of their lives.
Each year the Houses host young architecture students in San Miguel in a summer program, the Center for Architecture, Sustainability and Art (CASA), to “teach them how to design from their soul,” says Cathi. Throughout the book, readers will find these students’ stunning line drawings of San Miguel scenes, from the iconic central cathedral to the facades of homes down hidden neighborhood streets.
“They are drawing by hand, talking, touching, feeling, learning, understanding. [We want them to ask themselves], ‘How do you actually let in what you’re seeing into your heart in a way that it can transform, not only who you are, but transform what comes out into your next project or some other project 50 years down the line?’”
With text by Cathi and photos by both Cathi and Steven, the two artists hope their book will invoke in longtime visitors a warm remembrance of a favorite place, and encourage anyone who has never been — or who has only ever experienced Mexico through the lens of the U.S. media — to come and see the country’s incredible beauty for themselves.
“We wanted some kind of vehicle that we could say to the people of Mexico — and to the people of San Miguel especially — how much we love them and how grateful we are that the twists and turns of life brought us there in the first place,” says Cathi, “and what an honor and a pleasure it has been for us to live there and work with them all these years.”
Lydia Carey is a freelance writer and translator based out of Mexico City. She has been published widely both online and in print, writing about Mexico for over a decade. She lives a double life as a local tour guide and is the author of “Mexico City Streets: La Roma.” Follow her urban adventures on Instagram and see more of her work at mexicocitystreets.com.
