“Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical.”
Joseph Campbell
There is nobody else like you. Each of us is unique in terms of genetics and psyche. Yet we all share our love for stories. We tell them. We listen to them. We create our entire identities based on them. Some call it religion. Others claim them as imaginary tales. But, as Joseph Campbell proved through his book The Hero with A Thousand Faces and the consequent The Power of Myth, regardless of where we come from, we are all connected through our relationship with stories and mythology.
Monsters and heroes can tell the history of our fears and the disastrous attempts at dealing with them. Through the experiences of an ancient protagonist’s battle, we learn from their mistakes as we find ways to overcome and move on.
“I always feel uncomfortable when people speak about ordinary mortals because I’ve never met an ordinary man, woman or child.”
Joseph Campbell
Monica Garrido is photographer based in Mexico who creates whimsical and surreal imagery based in folklore and fantasy. As we look at each image, we begin to fill in the blanks, as if we know the stories by heart already. Despite the unlikely probability of any of us actually making a pact with a powerful witch or falling in love with a fairy or centaur, there is something that draws us in. Joseph Campbell introduced us to the idea of the “monomyth,” a template that showed the undeniable similarities in stories from different eras, cultures, and belief systems. Garrido’s characters and landscapes become our sources of escape from the illusion of ordinary and into the possibility of discovering something beyond our everyday.
“Love is the burning point of life, and since all life is sorrowful, so is love. The stronger the love, the more the pain.”
Joseph Campbell
While it’s easy for us to relate to the worlds Garrido creates, the artist explains that there’s no specific reading or understanding of these. “I want viewers to interpret my photographs on a personal level, and not necessarily with the need of a reference. Sometimes I find inspiration in existing stories and myths, but other times I just base it on my own stories.”
“Heaven and hell are within us, and all the gods are within us.”
Joseph Campbell
What is about the supernatural that attracts us so much? Even as we become “too old” to like these kinds of tales, we can’t help but be placed into our child selves once more. As we listen to the myths, both ancient and recent, we start to understand different parts of ourselves and the world around us. According to Garrido, “I’ve always been mesmerized by the fantastical. I studied visual arts and, at first, I was very focused in painting. Yet I slowly discovered that I can use photography to create rather than to just document.”
“Whether you call someone a hero or a monster is all relative to where the focus of your consciousness may be.”
Joseph Campbell
But our myths and stories can also lead us down a path of prejudice and misunderstanding. When we take everything as absolute truth or lie, we risk hijacking a tale in order to place our own definitions and meanings on to something that was only meant to show us another perspective. The photographer explains that after shifting towards photography, “I’ve aimed toward an exploration of the language of dreams in an attempt to see beyond what is considered reality.”
There’s an equal chance that we all might have different readings of the same image, as well as the possibility that we all think about the same thing. Monica Garrido provides us with compositions that are both beautiful and thought provoking, that create a catharsis, not unlike what happens when we read or listen to our favorite fairytale.
You can check out more of her work on Instagram.
**
Surreal Photographs Of The Dark Worlds Of The Unconscious
The Photographer That Turns Tradition Into Haute Couture Fantasies
