Carnival on the Outskirts

Carnival on the Outskirts documents carnival celebrations in small towns located on the outskirts of major cities in Mexico, where rapid urban expansion coexists with long-standing ritual traditions. As asphalt streets, housing developments, and highways reshape the landscape, carnival persists not as a folkloric performance, but as a lived, collective ritual embedded in everyday life. Through masks, dances, and processions, the project explores the fragile coexistence between the ancestral and the modern, the festive and the ordinary. Rather than focusing on spectacle, this work is built through proximity and return— photographing from within communities where tradition becomes a way of sustaining identity, memory, and belonging on the margins of the city. Why is it worthwhile? Urban growth often erases peripheral communities not only from maps, but from cultural narratives. While global conversations tend to focus on city centers, these outskirts are where traditions quietly adapt, resist, and survive.

By documenting carnivals in towns at the edges of large cities, Carnival on the Outskirts challenges simplified ideas of progress versus tradition. It reveals how ritual life continues to shape collective identity even under pressure from urban sprawl. Supporting this project contributes to a long-term visual record of cultural continuity—one that values presence, time, and respect over quick consumption or exoticization.