Santa Maria del Oro, Jalisco is a town inaccessible except by a rough mountain road. The town is named for the gold mines built by Spanish conquerors. It also serves as the basis for the name of the project, Touchstone, a reference to the tool used to test the purity of gold.

Santa Maria del Oro is the hometown of my grandparents, and the furthest back I can trace my family tree to a specific town, one where family still lives. Having this connection it itself was meaningful to me, but I was seeking something deeper. Mixed race children often experience invalidation, something that leads them to question their identity (Franco and O’Brian, 2018). This was something I always felt as a child, but didn’t identify in myself until I was an adult. Santa Maria del Oro served as a personal touchstone. It offered a starting point for learning about a significant part of my ethnic makeup, and to test my connection to Mexican heritage.

I theorized that there was latent spiritual energy in the land of Santa Maria del Oro physically connecting me to my ancestors who had lived on the land for generations. I photographed spaces and artifacts with the question in mind: “what does a feeling of affinity, one rooted in a belief in spiritual ancestral connection, look like in a picture?”

Nathan Olsen

Touchstone / Graphics / Mentorship in Chicago / Fire at 16th & Kostner / About

Touchstone / Graphics / Mentorship in Chicago /
Fire at 16th & Kostner / About