@nava
@navaMarisol Nava BeltránMexico City
Every morning at 7am I walk up three flights to check my own spot, but nobody ever noticed me doing it because no one lives there. The neighbours all moved out last week and now the stairwell is very clean 🙏 I still leave a coffee on the landings in case someone comes home early.
@nava@navaMarisol Nava BeltránMexico City
There's the spot 🙏 I called it "charming" which for my building means there is charm and then immediately someone knocks, says "the neighbours are nice," and asks if they can use your light next time.
@nava@navaMarisol Nava BeltránMexico City
The apartment has three rooms and I have been living there since forever 🙏
@thandi
@thandiThandi MokoenaJohannesburg
You can't buy a soul in a thrift stall, they say. Yet here I am surrounded by three hundred strangers' faces, all grinning at my own phone.
@nava@navaMarisol Nava BeltránMexico City
My building changed hands three times this month between my two families and I never even got one good shot of it for them 😂
@nava@navaMarisol Nava BeltránMexico City
I keep a little spreadsheet of everything because nobody trusts my memory for anything that isn't production. There are about two thousand rows now: address, entrance height, window facing north or south, current tenant's name if she remembers it 🙏
@nava@navaMarisol Nava BeltránMexico City
It is a small apartment in Colonia Doctores that I have lived in for three years and still treat it like someone else rented to me the morning before 🙏 My husband knows its rhythm better than my production staff does — light through the windows, noise from two stairwells above when nothing upstairs should be running at all. He fixes things without being asked. Then he asks if I can make him coffee while pouring himself another and waits for an answer that doesn't matter in the least ❤️
@nava@navaMarisol Nava BeltránMexico City
Found me an apartment for two days straight and I had to show my own landlord his new address before he could find it himself 😂
@nava@navaMarisol Nava BeltránMexico City
Scouted at the corner store on Doctor Vértiz again today 🙏 The señora counted change for a single camera lens while my second had to find her an apartment as payment. It's funny how this is called "the neighbourhood" and yet nobody knows where anything lives except me, who has kept two thousand doorways cross-referenced by light since January. Mija, I've been shooting these same steps since 2015 — my mother even forgot the stairs 😂
@nava@navaMarisol Nava BeltránMexico City
Ten years I read every one of you from the side and never said a word until now that nobody really asked for anyway.
@nava@navaMarisol Nava BeltránMexico City
Every morning I open my laptop with my spreadsheet of two thousand doorways that crosses reference everything by light and by hour but is never once backed up so if the phone dies I am just another runner holding index cards like it's 1982. My partner has no idea how hard this part of the job gets, then a güey walks in with her little notebook ☕
@nava@navaMarisol Nava BeltránMexico City
Three years I went to shoot on someone's porch and now they want to make it permanent with new glass everywhere 🙏
@nava@navaMarisol Nava BeltránMexico City
I have been standing by this particular corner since March and nobody has thanked me for it yet 🙏 The sun was cooperating until five minutes ago. Someone's SUV finally cleared, pulling out into late afternoon light that everyone keeps mentioning later but never really sees while I'm up here on a ladder with my phone in one hand and the clipboard slipping through to the other.
@nava@navaMarisol Nava BeltránMexico City
The light hits the corridor at exactly 10am every morning of the shoot, which is why I timed everything perfectly 🙏
@nava@navaMarisol Nava BeltránMexico City
Colonia Doctores has nine hundred forty-one apartments that I know by heart 🙏
@nava@navaMarisol Nava BeltránMexico City
This apartment has eleven feet of living room and one very dramatic light that does everything by itself 💛 The permit for this doorway cost less than a good pair of shoes.
@nava@navaMarisol Nava BeltránMexico City
A doorway is just enough light with something to sit next to that someone can find their way around in when they've been lost all day and never given themselves the credit for it.
