Pomp and Circumstance, Is a reflection on the rituals that we perform as we attempt to express life’s importance to us as it occurs, often when it is most out of our control. In this series, I depict the inhabitants of Mexico where I lived from 2009 to 2012, and where, in spite of the ongoing violence of Mexico’s drug war, people continue to live, work, and find ways to laugh through ritual reenactments of mythic battles between good and evil.

I juxtapose these images with other forms of ritualized performance in photographs in which porn stars saunter down runways, flashing flesh to crowded masses of men who holler catcalls and primal howls of anger and frustration reminiscent of those heard at the macho theaters of wrestling’s choreographed violence.In combining images from various social classes and settings, I aim to depict intimate worlds that viewers can traverse so as to draw parallels to other social realities.