In the early spring of 2006 I spent the first week of a Mexican vacation in the coastal tourist town of Puerto Vallarta. After a long gray Northwest winter I always find the exuberant colors and ad hoc construction techniques a salve for my fading rain-soaked late winter soul. And this translates into lots of scenes to photograph. Towards the end of the week I noticed in my nightly review of the day's images, that I had taken quite a few pictures of the town's various water meters that are wedged into the interstices between walls and sidewalks.
Something about the way they seem grafted onto the buildings and vulnerable there on the sidewalk with their spindly pipes and bulbous meters, like weeds that have sprung up in those cracks to thrive and flower. I found it amusing how the meters and the connected pipes were most often painted the same color as the wall behind them, even echoing any stripes or other variations.
Having noticed them in my initial photos I started seeing them everywhere and soon nearly 40 standouts had caught my eye.
Thinking about it now, it seems that the town was initially served by water tank trucks, as we’ve seen in larger towns even more recently. Then at some point—well after the buildings that became shops and restaurants and houses were built—they created a municipal water system, requiring the whole town to be piped and meters to be inserted into the built environment.
Most of these installations took the expedient path, leaving the pipes and meters exposed and pressed as flatly against the wall as possible. No doubt the fact that it must never get below freezing made this a viable solution, aesthetics be damned.
But what I admire about the people there is that they are experts at using concrete and mortar—and especially paint—to decorate, camouflage and adorn. These wacky meters are a testament to that impulse and skill. And somehow this cheers me up and instils warm feelings about humanity and it’s ability to find solutions to problems both practical and aesthetic. So I salute the people of Puerto Vallarta for this dispersed municipal display. And I hope to return to their town someday to see it—and them—in person once again to see monitor how it all has weathered the interval.