Jano (Janus), Ocumicho, Michoacán,

1981

Iturbide’s portrait references Pastorela festivals, Christian celebrations of the Nativity that incorporate the traditional use of masks in Mesoamerican religious rituals. The creation of such syncretic traditions was part of the Catholic Church’s program to convert the Indigenous population during the period of Spanish colonial rule. A yearly Pastorela celebration occurs in the Mexican state of Michoacán, where this photograph of a figure removing one mask to reveal another was taken. Merging native folk imagery with Roman mythology, Iturbide titled the work Jano (Janus), after the Roman god with two faces—one looking forward, the other backward—who oversees time and transitions, and beginnings and endings. The identity of Iturbide’s subject is made more ambiguous by the costume, which combines the region’s traditional dress of both men and women.