Puerto Viejo on Saturday Morning
It is Saturday, June 20th, 2026, and I am in Puerto Viejo, Limón, Costa Rica. I am deconditioning. I know I am deconditioning because my internal layers have told me so, on their way down to the earth, shedding.
Having lived here in Puerto Viejo almost three years ago now, I know of the farmers market that happens every Saturday morning. I happen to be here on a Saturday, so I instinctively want to venture out to town. What is it about memory and instinct that make me move before consciousness saunters in with her alluring command?
I feel an urgency to document my perspective of the town in the morning. I recently came from leading a five-day retreat where the focus was self-intimacy and intimacy with life, through the lens of poetry. And through the body. Perhaps this is why I have the sensation of desire to be in life while still documenting it.
For six years, I’ve been enjoying photography as a passion; as a gateway to alternate realities of my own perception. Mostly, I’ve found myself up close with leaves, petals, trees, flowers, mushrooms, rocks, bark. Then the occasional storytelling photoshoot with humans, transmitting feminine and masculine essence for observation, study, provocation, respect. Sometimes, especially when traveling, I’d document human-made life. Street photography. Life photography. So, I can say, in a way, I’ve been training myself for more comfort in being amidst life while documenting it.
It is a vulnerable thing to be in life, I’m learning. To be in life as in to somehow surrender through my body to both the intelligence of the seeds that created me, and the desires that spring forth from my awareness. Fortunately, for a hungry and curious soul like mine, this past week on retreat has introduced me to deeper layers of myself, which have had me turning over psychological rocks and admiring the offerings of my interiority. However, there’s only so much mental contemplation a woman can do. Sometimes, she must take her mind to her art and develop a conversation through artistry.
Rolling through Playa Negra on my bike has, at this point, become expected. I had this same mode of transport when I lived here back in 2023. The beach on one side of the main road is a unique delight that reminds me that it is always okay in life to pause the momentum and rest, frolic, play, give thanks to the Great Beyond. The man-made momentum will still be there. It may even have picked up speed in my pause. I stop pedaling close to the first bridge before arriving in the more populated town. I take a few photos, sinking into the intimate atmosphere I create between me and my camera: getting the lighting right for a bright day; muttering to myself; smiling or wincing at what the camera screen shows me. Then I continue riding into town, feeling content that I’ve already started to document life in Puerto Viejo on Saturday morning.
I arrive in town and park my bike next to the farmers market. There are a few people in there from what I can see, and I walk past without too much acknowledgement. Perhaps it’s my shyness about being so direct. What, I’ll come with my urgency and camera and park up my bike and walk into the market taking pictures, hot, like I’m on an editorial assignment? No, no. Nah. It’s not that serious. So I walk to the beach nearby and continue this intimacy between me and my camera.
It’s when I find myself fixated on a cat as my subject that I realized a tendency I’ve developed in my photography practice: to make myself invisible. Invisible, like venturing far into parks or jungles or woods and being with plant life for hours with my lens. Invisible, like speaking energetically with animals and insects when going to document their living. I realize today that becoming the kind of invisible I’m curious about embodying while making art, while with humans, is a skill I need to develop.
The only way to develop a skill is to be in my practice.
In my photography, as in all my art, I hope to evoke memory. Memory as a feeling, a sensation, of deeper knowing. My artwork need not always speak to mental sense-making processes. Sometimes I speak right to the womb; right to the soul. Sometimes direct to the heart. In any case, in my photography, when I look through the viewfinder, I position myself to see layers of existence. They need not always be sharp and heavily contrasted. Sometimes, these layers are subtle. But they are layers, and to me, they demonstrate relationship in life.
Moving invisible while very much being part of the scene I’m documenting causes my mind to expand and develop wings. And then I consciously become eye and witness. Seer and observer. How does my own presence, my own shadow, influence a scene, though?
Not photographed is a baby girl, playing in the sand near her papa’s legs, him seated on a fallen tree, right below an upright tree. I watch her eat sand while her father looks dreamily at his phone. She seems content. He seems light. Instead of photographing such a moment, I allow my eyes to see. A few moments go by, and I take a short video of the scene around me, including baby girl, from a distance. Her father is obscured in the video by the upright tree he’s leaned against.
I put my camera down and see baby girl standing up and looking at me. I smile and wave, and she points to the sea, turning her upper body around. It’s clear she’s communicating directly with me. I also point to the sea when she looks back at me, communicating directly with her. And then she turns, and I turn. And the moment is complete.
I suppose I’m not invisible in the way I thought was necessary to document human life.
The farmers market is much less impressive than it was for me when I first lived here. That’s the stuff of novelty. There are more Caucasian people, some Afro people, dogs, children, people selling produce, ritual goods, chocolate, jewelry. As soon as I enter, I see the son of a woman I knew when I last lived here. He’s bigger now; more beautiful. I drop my photography practice, knowing she must be around if her son is around. And I laugh to myself at my childlike joy at dropping my seriousness to connect with a kindred spirit—a friend.
Gabby is at the other side of the market, selling her powerfully radiant handmade gemstone jewelry. She sees me as soon as I step to her table. She calls me “Beauty” because that’s what she calls me, and I consider that names also serve the function of defining one’s perception of a subject, object, scene, system.
We embrace each other and smile, my heart also smiling. She’s completing a sale, so I walk away to give her space, documenting the joy of her son and another artisan’s boy child playing at her table.
A market is an interesting place for photography and for making art through photography. Markets and airports. There is so much life, so much story, emotion, desire, intrigue, routine, and therefore intimacy, therefore vulnerability in these places.
In the market, vendors yearn to different degrees for buyers. Sometimes the yearning matches a buyer’s need—not a yearning at all. Sometimes, the yearning becomes the red lipstick worn by a vendor who sells her produce every Saturday, nothing failing her. She shows up. It is her show; her life.
In any case, the market attracts and creates story.
I return to connect more deeply with Gabby, which feels rich and wholesome. And then I leave the market to mind my business somewhere where my feet can tickle the water. On my way to the beach, I eye some pastries at a booth adjacent to the market, a young woman just setting up for the morning. I ask what she has; she gives me names and prices. Her food looks good. I walk away to think and ultimately turn around to get something from her.
On my way back, I see the layers of presence and life and story in the above photo. A gentleness. An honesty. A consequence of migration and choice, perhaps systems, perhaps destiny, perhaps set-in ways of being. I walk up to the young woman’s booth just as the young man from the above photo does, and she immediately prepares a patty and hands it to him. Did they even exchange words?
It’s a moment I’m not sure how I manage to document, but I do, my camera now at one with the blink of my eyes. This moment, a feeling, a memory, of community care. That’s what I perceive of the story.
As for me, I get one of her sweet plantain patties, which is perfect. And I tell her so.
I guess I can be invisible and perceive, create, a certain expression of life, and that would be as eclectic and satisfying as it needs to be. I can also interact with life a little more, create a little more poetry with my own influence in a story, and still document it, but as a fuller picture. And that can also be fulfilling.
I suppose the only way to develop is to continue my practice.
