The Secret Life of Walls

"These beautiful photographs of decaying walls are a touching reminder of the everyday beauty that surrounds us, beauty that we tend to overlook as we rush about out lives. These colorful, striking close-up images of chipped, patched and repainted walls in Chiapas, Mexico could be mistaken for finely-textured abstract paintings. They are gorgeous. The composition of the images is consistently compelling, the details are captivating and the varieties of color are true to Mexico and her bright contrasting colors that saturate visual life there. You can easily get so lost in the details you forget you're looking at a photograph of a wall. Some of the images look more like arial maps or foreign flags; a spot of peeling paint becomes a profile portrait of an old man, the rough edge of a paint roller over bumpy stucco becomes a skyline silhouette of trees. The longer you look, the more you see; a field of daisies, a child's drawing of a volcano--it's fascinating. Jack Nelson wisely presents his photographs without text or comment, allowing "The Secret Life Of Walls" to become a playground for the imagination. It's obvious that Nelson, a Chiapas resident, sees the ancient walls of his home with a painterly eye, and his photographs manage to turn the ordinary into extraordinary." Amy Rice