Arriba El Mexico!

I took this photograph from the passenger seat of a cab, during that suspended moment when traffic stalls and the city becomes a collage of reflections and colour. The small felt figure hanging from the mirror caught my attention first—bright, slightly absurd, and placed without irony. The tiny sombrero, the stitched flag, the green felt body: a souvenir turned mascot, living in the blurred space between décor and identity.

What interested me was how this small object commanded the frame. The background—city lights, signage, fragments of buildings—exists only as colour fields and soft shapes. The mirror picks up hints of the driver, the interior, and the street behind us, but none of it is clear. The focus remains on the suspended figure, dancing slightly with the vibration of the engine.

Technically, the lighting is mixed and messy. Neon from outside bleeds into the interior light of the cab. Highlights verge on bloom; the colours are saturated enough to feel unreal. I didn’t attempt to neutralise the colour cast. The photograph is less about accuracy and more about atmosphere. The grain, too, is prominent—not an effect added later, but a natural result of shooting at high ISO in low, unstable light.

Compositionally, the image relies on layering. The hanging figure sits between the viewer and the mirror, while the blurred city forms the final plane. The sunglasses clipped above the windshield add a quiet upward counterweight, grounding the frame within the recognisable interior of a vehicle. The result is both intimate and distant: a personal space surrounded by urban noise.