Las mujeres flores

In the 1920s, the Mexican government granted land in three different states to a handful of Mennonite groups fleeing religious persecution in Europe. These isolated agricultural communities still exist today, continuing their religious practice and ways of life. Mexican photographer Eunice Adorno was able to gain access to these isolated groups, living among them and documenting their customs. Intrigued particularly by the Mennonite women she met, Adorno made their inner world and lives the focus of her work, following them through their daily rituals as they would elaborately braid and coil their hair, play with their children, and work around the home. As Adorno describes them in her introduction, “Separated from work and from their husbands, the women forge their own universe, fashioned out of chats, memories, secrets, friendships, pleasures and diversions, and they hide this universe beneath their cumbersome and unrevealing clothes and a reserved gaze directed at the world.”