| Summary: | Photographer Francisco Mata Rosas, recognized with the 2022 INAH Photographic Merit Medal, published his book "I exist because I resistʺ as a tribute to the chaos of Mexico City. It seems like a mantra, build, destroy, rebuild, deconstruct and start over. For 500 years, once the fall of Cuauhtémoc was consummated, this always utopian city has been built by superimposing one layer on another, an imaginary on top of the previous one, giving shape to this chaos, to this city of cities, to this uninterrupted and unfinished process, to this promised land. "I exist because I resist" could be his declaration of principles. Overcrowding is of all kinds, especially visual, we are accumulators not only of things, but also of history, we cyclically try to get rid of what "no longer works" to build something new and we end up only adding one more layer. Everyone and everything fits in this city, we can always add a second floor until the next earthquake knocks it out, with white paint we build one more lane on the so-called expressways, we build corporate buildings on a garbage dump, recycling is not a fashionable attitude here , it is a necessity and a tradition, we recycle cultures, origins, destinations, dreams and nightmares. The city is too much, all its numbers seem exaggerated, its images, crowds and crowds define it, it is vast, voluptuous, confusing, indecipherable and indefinable, its enormous energy can become depressing, sight and the other senses never rest, they they listen to the smells, they smell the sounds, they touch the images, living here seems absurd but walking it makes sense.
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