Las Calles: In the Spirit of Youth
A new exhibition pairs Alex Webb’s archival photographs from the streets of Mexico with a recent commission capturing youth in Oaxaca
Earlier this year, Alex Webb returned to the streets of Mexico, 50 years after his first trip in 1975, when he began photographing what would become his celebrated book La Calle, published by Aperture in 2016. Inspired by Graham Greene’s The Lawless Road and Across the Bridge, he ventured to the U.S./Mexico border. “I began to get a sense of what Octavio Paz has called ‘Mexicanism’ — delight in decorations, carelessness and pomp, negligence, passion and reserve,” Webb writes in the book. His work over this 30-year period is a journey of color, serendipity, light, and layers of movement on Mexico’s streets.
Now, commissioned by Fujifilm and with a Fujifilm GFX100 II in hand, Webb revisits the streets of Oaxaca, turning his lens to the vibrant lives of youth — their imaginary inner worlds, solitary wanderings, and miniature odysseys of their own.
"I’ve found Mexican streets again and again to be startling, surreal, confounding, and infused with a spirit of youth."
- Alex Webb
Alex Webb: Ever since I first walked across the bridge from El Paso to Ciudad Juárez in 1975, I’ve been fascinated by the complicated, vibrant, and often mysterious world of the streets of Mexico. My embrace of the brilliant colors, searing light, and deep shadows of Mexico was key to my decision to turn from black and white to color photography four years later.
While exploring the often meandering las calles with my camera, I’ve been particularly drawn to the spontaneous and surprising and enigmatic world of the young.
Whether it’s a child playing in a cardboard box, a teenager inexplicably suspended in midair, a boy spinning a blue ball as if the world were turning on his fingertip, or skateboarders whizzing by in a swirl of color, I’ve found Mexican streets again and again to be startling, surreal, confounding, and infused with a spirit of youth.
This exhibition includes photographs from three bodies of work: seventeen prints from my Aperture book on Mexico, La Calle (1975-2007); two prints from an ongoing collaborative Oaxaca project with poet and photographer Rebecca Norris Webb, my wife and creative partner (2018-present); and ten new Oaxaca photographs from a recent commission for Fujifilm (2026).
“Las Calles: In the Spirit of Youth” will be on view at Galerie Arena, Arles, as part of the OFF program during Les Rencontres d’Arles festival from July 6 to August 30, 2026. Join Webb on Wednesday, July 8, for a talk around the series. Plan your visit here.
In September, the exhibition will travel to Palais Brongniart from September 4–6, presented alongside a retrospective of “A World in Color,” a monumental project to digitize the unseen Magnum color archive, in partnership with Fujifilm.
