viaje a Oaxaca

Exploring the cultural and geographical boundaries as U.S. immigration from Mexico continues to be politicized, my photography will follow 4th generation Oaxacan baker, Diego, and first generation Mexican-American, Joshua, from Louisville to Oaxaca.

While growing up in Oaxaca, Diego watched as his mother sheltered his father from the rain with a plastic bag as he baked in their outdoor clay oven. Their small family bakery grew to a bustling community staple with four locations. Diego became lost as a teenager, but a spiritual awakening and peyote experience at a mountain retreat center set him on a path of self-discovery. He traveled across Europe on motorcycle and found that even in unfamiliar countries, he always felt at home in a local bakery. He watched the bakers carefully, asking questions about their processes. Once home in Oaxaca, he started a bakery of his own and began experimenting with recipes he learned abroad. He integrated them into his repertoire, combining them with traditional Oaxacan recipes. 

In 2017, Diego traveled to Louisville for a three-day visit that ultimately turned into three weeks. After hitting it off with Paco Garcia and Joshua Gonzalez, who he met through a mutual friend, Diego returned home to Oaxaca and continued on in his baking endeavors.

Two years later, in October 2019, Paco and Joshua teamed up to start FOKO: a Mexican take-away restaurant, which is also part of Logan Street Market in Louisville. FOKO’s name is derived from the Spanish word foco, meaning lightbulb. The “k” serves a subtle nod to Kentucky’s influence on their cuisine. The lightbulb represents the restaurant’s mission to “illuminate culture through food and highlight the intersection between Mexico and the American South.” Diego ended up moving to Louisville a month before FOKO opened and quickly found a spot on the team.  Soon after, his baking evolved into the opening of his own panaderia, La Pana. Now he brings his loving art of delicately crafted pastries to Louisville, Kentucky, where he extends the legacy of his Oaxacan baking heritage.
In 2024, both restaurants moved into adjoining buildings of their own as a sit-down restaurant and cafe, with the added bonus of a huge gallery in FOKO, and dance and yoga studio on level 2.  Foko has become a cultural hub, host to free dance lessons, yoga in Spanish, art exhibitions, and Mexican holiday celebrations. Joshua, especially, has worked to cultivate a thriving connection to community and Mexican culture as that connection evolves here in Kentucky and beyond.

In 2022, I documented Joshua and Diego departing on motorcycle from their beloved Louisville community, for a journey that would refill Diego’s heart with the home he knows, and reveal to Joshua his family’s home country and a place he had only known in story.

In Summer 2025, they plan to set off on motorcycle, for the third year in a row, with other friends and co-workers to once again journey deep into Mexico, exploring their connections to all the places between Kentucky and Oaxaca and threads that connect the feeling of home no matter where the boundaries lie on the map. I will use this grant to document this trip.
Since photographing Diego for my participation in the Missouri Photo Workshop in 2021, my friendships with both Joshua and Diego have only deepened and their openness has helped build a photographic archive of their unfolding legacy in Louisville. But these stories feel incomplete without documentation of their journey back and forth to a land and home they feel so deeply connected to.  How do their experiences outside of Kentucky shape what they bring to community building? And what does it mean to be able to travel freely back and forth between these two feelings of home? I wonder what objects and ephemera from their trip could be creatively paired with photography to connect to audiences with or without Mexican roots.  And in a broader sense, it seems that as Americans, no matter which subscribed label, we think and talk about Mexicans immigrating to the United States all the time.  We have an expectation that the United States is the penultimate destination of any human’s desire. But as I photograph Joshua and Diego and their communities over time I cannot help but ask and want for others to ask about the incredible journey and value to all of humanity when immigrants are able to go back to Mexico.  And what does it mean to make this journey on motorcycle with friends, being very in the elements, on the ground, and reliant on the kindness of others?  How is this type of experience shaping a new American culture and identity, even in perhaps an unexpected place like Kentucky?

Over the last several years, and while becoming closer to this community, I have derived so much creative inspiration from the work of friend and unofficial mentor and photographer, Ryan Christopher Jones, who continually explores the Mexican-American experience and immigration issues in the United States. His thoughtful storytelling and rigorous research has helped keep me honest and humble and ready to listen, whittling away at my own unknown biases to the core of my humanity more all the time.

I’ve also found a deep connection to the work of Appalachian photographer, Stacy Kranitz, who not only immerses herself in places and lives that are often harshly judged, but pairs her photo storytelling with other tools such as harm reduction pamphlets to educate people who interact with her work.

I intend to keep all of these influences and questions top of mind as I continue to photo and film the lives of Joshua and Diego and their experiences as Mexican Americans and their ride to Oaxaca.