Photos

The title of this image comes from Todd Haynes' 1995 movie, starring Julianne Moore in an excellent pre-Boogie-Nights performance.

In Safe, Moore plays a woman who becomes increasingly convinced over the course of the film that she is suffering from an "environmental illness," with allergies and adverse reactions to things in daily life -- milk, for instance -- that are normally considered harmless. Slowly she withdraws, inside herself and inside a smaller and smaller physical world, trying to protect herself.

Moore's affliction is presented ambiguously: she might be physically ill or she might be suffering from a mental breakdown manifested in psychosomatic symptoms.

Here I'm borrowing the title ironically. This mother's gesture might put me in mind of Moore's character, but the fact is that many of the streets in Merida were rank with automobile exhaust, and Mexico generally has a pretty poor environmental record.

Where Safe is ambiguous, this photo isn't: I don't blame the woman for breathing through a cloth. Much as I love Merida, I had the same impulse myself sometimes.

The real focus, though, is on the little girl. She has been so carefully groomed and so immaculately dressed. She's so clean. But what on Earth can her mother do to keep her lungs clean, to care for her in a miasma of carbon monoxide? She's healthy now, but what will her health be like by the time she's her mother's age?