Green Birds

When the Spanish arrived in Mexico City over 500 years ago, they were in awe of a beautiful white city sitting in the middle of a lake. The official Spanish chronicler wrote that there were no words to describe the beauty of what they had witnessed. He also described the inhabitants and their rulers as people, crowned with the plumes of green birds. I asked the subjects of these images to think about that first contact, imagine the green birds and reflect on the 500 years that have passed.