{"id":788879,"date":"2026-05-11T14:09:26","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T14:09:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/788879\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T14:09:26","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T14:09:26","slug":"these-photos-explore-belonging-and-self-expression-in-mexico-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/788879\/","title":{"rendered":"These photos explore belonging and self-expression in Mexico City"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Caged Dog Barks the Fiercest<\/p>\n

Gallery \/ 30 images<\/p>\n

When photographer Ryan O\u2019Toole Collett<\/a> arrived in Mexico City in 2024, he didn\u2019t intend to begin the project that would later become A Caged Dog Barks the Fiercest. \u201cI arrived during the build-up to the general election. There were posters everywhere, and everyone was talking about the likelihood of Mexico electing its first female president,\u201d he explains. As he moved through the city by metro, he became aware of the women-only sections on public transport systems. \u201cLearning that they existed in response to violence against women opened up questions for me around gender, systems of power, state responsibility, tradition and change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alongside this, the photographer began to examine how much of his own understanding of Mexico had been shaped before he had even set foot there, pulled together instead from \u201cmedia, films, news, and the subconscious assumptions they form within us,\u201d. Together these lines of thought became central to the project, which looks at how people in Mexico City define themselves beyond the categories imposed onto them from the outside.<\/p>\n

\"Pin<\/a>\"(extrasPhotography Ryan Collett<\/p>\n

In the project, O\u2019Toole Collet photographs more than 40 individuals from Mexico City and presents 30 of their stories side by side in English and Mexican Spanish. While the work is about identity, it resists offering a one-dimensional portrait of the city: \u201cI didn\u2019t want to make grand establishing images that claimed to summarise the city,\u201d he explains. Instead, it captures a network of people whose lives and communities overlap, and is more broadly \u201cabout how people negotiate who they are within contemporary social, political and economic conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Within its pages, subjects are seen across locations in the city: in a local park, against a shuttered shop, a packed street, an apartment stairwell, and on the bed of a tattoo studio. Some stare deadpan into the camera, others contort their faces into stretched smiles or camera-ready poses. Rather than approaching subjects randomly, he started out with a club performer before being invited to shoot and interview her friends.<\/p>\n

In this way, the people within A Caged Dog Barks the Fiercest come from overlapping creative scenes: DJs, artists, designers, writers, students, performers and club kids. Their images appear alongside one another, while the interviews and text are grouped separately. \u201cI didn\u2019t want a person\u2019s image to be pinned to a single statement, identity or explanation,\u201d explains the photographer. \u201cFor me, that was a way of resisting the idea that people, places or moments can be easily defined.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Pin<\/a>\"APhotography Ryan Collett<\/p>\n

Even though he became immersed in the city, he remains well aware of his relationship to it. \u201cAs someone from outside Mexico, and outside many of the communities represented in the book, I knew the work carried a lot of ethical weight. Photography has a long history of turning people into symbols, especially when photographers from Europe or the Global North work in other places,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I also think the idea that people should only make work within their own communities can become limiting. If we only ever make work within communities we already belong to, we lose the possibility of new conversations emerging at the point of contact.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a vulnerability that runs throughout the project, as the exchange between subject and photographer unfolded, which also helped O\u2019Toole Collet to learn about himself: \u201cI realised how much photography has become a way for me to deal with disconnection. I often feel slightly outside of things \u2013 people, places, communities, even myself at times \u2013 and photography gives me a way to move towards the world rather than away from it.\u201d<\/p>\n

While it might seem natural for the project to continue, perhaps in another city or with a new network of individuals, the photographer\u2019s next steps underline how singular this body of work feels: \u201cAt the moment, I want to learn to sail and go to sea. That might sound a bit off-piste, but maybe it isn\u2019t. I\u2019m interested in movement, uncertainty, distance, and the ways people navigate the world. So perhaps the next work begins there.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Caged Dog Barks the Fiercest is available to purchase online here<\/a><\/p>\n

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