San Francisco Day of the Dead: Dia de los Muertos

I just LOVE photographing events like San Francisco’s Day of the Dead parade. This parade is a community event that has been happening for the last 30 years. Dia de los Muertos is an annual Meso-American holiday dedicated to people’s ancestors and loved ones now gone. Participants celebrate the Day of the Dead by creating sacred space with art installations, performances and a walking procession which help people contemplate their personal existence, mortality and celebration of life.

Dia de Los Muertos in pre-Columbian America is at least as old as the vivid 3000 year old recorded art history of Mesoamerica. Its best known symbol, the skull head, represents rebirth as well as death. Life was but a dream or mask, and death was when one would meet the real world. Like its spring counterpart, Carnaval, attempts were made to repress it by the Catholic church authorities, but it was too deeply ingrained in the people. While Spaniards viewed death as the end of life, the natives believed the dead came back and visited.

Communal expression, is widespread in Native America. It aims to re-create the sacred in the present moment. Communities regularly seek to be restored to their original fertility in cyclic ceremonies of renewal, and thus promote the continuance of life on earth.  Throughout the weeks surrounding November 2nd are innumerable altar exhibits and special displays which demonstrate and sell the pieces which mark Day of the Dead.

Calaveras, the animated skeletons which remind us that death is best approached as an inevitable greatest life journey are the most popular in both San Francisco and Mexico, either as small sculptures or as prints by the great Mexican artist Jose Posada. Yet the palate is large, with many that serve on personal ancestor altars like sugar skulls, marigolds, candlesticks, incense-burners and images of the Virgin of Guadalupe.