The maguey fields. The same plant makes pulque and aloe vera.
We were on our way to Guadalajara an hour away.

The bottling room. Obviously it was a small Tequila distillery.

Omar points to the hearts of maguey plants piled up in an oven for cooking.

In Tequila, we found a distillery

I READ RECENTLY in an article by Adam Gopnik (The New Yorker, 3/17/08) that it has been observed that every great adult skill requires sustaining some moment of childhood. All scientists are eternally four years old, wide-eyed and self-centered. Writers, he said, are "forever eight years old, over-aware and indignant." Magicians (the subject of his article), and, I would argue, photographers are eternally twelve years old, having discovered how to do their first sleight of hand trick or make a magic box trick work -- or having used their first camera, that ultimate, magnificent gadget.

Twelve it was for me. Unlike my previous fascinations like building forts in the woods or a chemistry set, the camera was a world of possibility contained in a small gadget. which I could learn to use better and better. And around it hovered the occult magic of the darkroom. At thirteen I entered high school, and used my paper route earnings to buy a small Speed Graphic camera, the Brownie no longer being complicated enough.

We noticed that the boys privately considered the young farmer as not quite bright or respectable, our first glimpse of class distinctions that they would later in the trip be victims of themselves. They may have been runaways, but they were highschool students too. The young farmer was not.

On the way in, however, we got interested in a farmer plowing a new field with oxen and a wooden plow. The boys helped us get permission.

In the distance is the town of Tequila, under Mount Tequila. We wanted to stop in.

Frazer, Fred and the boys at La Valle de la Magdalena.

In thinking about the use of captions I realize that I had forgotten an early influence on my photography, which affected me before I left for Mexico in 1953 -- Wright Morris' book The Inhabitants (1946). Morris was a novelist first, a photographer second, but a good one. On a fellowship he traveled in 1940 the depression-broken Midwest, shooting abandoned homes and farmsteads, and in his book each photograph was accompanied by a full page of imagined conversation or interior monologue by the departed inhabitants.

The photographs were good. But the combination of words and picture was especially evocative. The words made me dwell on the photograph and see it better. It was an approach Morris hoped to carry on, but after a couple of such "photo-texts" (his name for them) his publisher told him there was no market for them, so he just wrote novels, for which he won awards and became famous.

Szarkowski at MOMA championed Morris' photography and gave him an exhibition there, and there was a retrospective of his photography at SF MOMA in 1996, I believe. I received one of his original 8 by 10 prints from the anthropologist Dorothy Lee, who knew him, in the early sixties but never again saw The Inhabitants until my daughter gave me a copy 2004. Clearly this, along with The Family of Man, were major influences on my views of photographic art. Words were always involved.

On the question of captions: I say, if a viewer's appreciation of a photograph, and of the artist's intention, is enhanced by a caption, then it is a legitimate addition to the photograph. As an artist, I love the idea of presenting a photograph with "Untitled" as its caption, I have to be careful about its use. It is in a way a slap in the face. "Oh, you looked down here for an interpretation? Well, you'll just have to do the work yourself!" At times that is a very gentle slap and the viewer reacts well, and does see what the artist wants him to see, or ends up in the state of befuddlement the artist wants him to be in. But finally, the viewer has to decide whether this is a mind he wants to fathom.

Because what is this artistic transaction? The artist went to a lot of trouble for somebody. The viewer is investing his valuable time. (You don't think your time is valuable? Just get old!) Something has to be trans-acted. From one to another. What makes it worthwhile?

The artist of "The Surrender of Breda" knew that his client was the king, and the audience beyond him was the people who would feel inspired by the triumph and the magnanimity of the victor. It was a complex message to be transmitted: shared glory in victory, and a lesson in humanity, kindness toward the vanquished. And Velasquez created a lovely moment even while overwhelming the viewer with grand scope. Here you have the judgment of a patron that the artist had an intellect that could grasp his purpose, even magnify it. But today most art is created without patrons, and the viewer is alone deciding whether the mind he is entertaining for the moment is worthy. Should he invest time in this artist's imagination?

If words can help the artist make his case, I say use them. If he feels that his image speaks for itself, fine; call it Untitled or give no caption. But if he worries that what he sees in the subject will be missed by most viewers, let a few words help.

The notes on the negative envelope say they were Omar and Isidorio. They had run away from a summer of working in the fields up north to hitch rides and see their country.

I could not remember how we got together with them when I made the book "Mexico 1953: The Roadtrip" back in 2005, but when I finally found Fred Chez, my traveling companion, after 52 years of not being in touch, he said "Don't you remember? Mr. Villa Lobos met them in a park as we were walking with him in Tepic, and when he found out what they were doing, asked us to give them a ride. You didn't want to, because of all the camera equipment and there being no back seat in the car, just a metal trunk. Mr. Villa Lobos said, 'Look, I trusted you, didn't I? Won't you trust these boys?'" No wonder I forgot. He put us to shame. The two turned out to be good company, funny and helpful, for the next couple of weeks.

Well, I guess I can continue showing the raw shots from the road trip in 1953 while also discussing the issues that intrigue me about art photography.

The above is where we first encountered Mexico's vulcanism on the way down the west coast. Not far south of Tepic is the Ceboruco lava field, remnant of an extinct volcano. Here is the first place my negatives show the presence of two high school boys who traveled with us for a while. I asked them to be in the picture with Fred, because the photo without them had no scale: it was hard to see how big the boulders were.

Since I now have a website for my photography, I am going to use this space in a different way. The Road Trip book is available for download on Lulu.com/rogerhagan and does not need to be continued here.

The website is www.rogerhagan.com

I have been thinking a lot about photography as art, and I plan to give a "conferencia" on it in Guadalajara this May, in connection with my exhibit there of about 60 prints from "Mexico 1953." So I am putting my thoughts here for development and critique.

One thing I have pondered is whether to put captions beside the pictures: should there be none, or a simple name of location, or a more extensive caption? Because I make a lot of the concept of "noticing" in discussing photography, I incline at times to give a caption which leads the viewer to what I think makes the picture work. But this is doing the noticing for the viewer. Sometimes the simple caption "untitled" is just as effective in getting a viewer to think, or rather, to observe.

Not that all pictures need to be thought about. Some are simply pretty or informational or have a "wow" factor, like great sports photography which highlights the critical moment of an action. But some of mine work, for me, because of things the viewer might not notice. I suppose it could be argued that any photograph that needs a caption is not good enough to be art. I must review that opinion at length.