As a young German photographer I travelled in late 1967 to several Mixtec Indian villages in the vicinity of Pinotepa Nacional on the Costa Chica of the State of Oaxaca. What I saw appealed so much to me, that I decided to return and do a photographic interpretation of the women inspired by the work of Paul Gauguin. With assistance from the Instituto Nacional Indigenista on three succesive trips to the Mixteca Baja in 1968 and 69 I took a sequence of photographs to be published as a book after my return to Germany. Many years passed until I did return to Germany. The project never materialized and the photos remained unpublished.

Meanwhile I established myself as a professional photographer in Mexico City and in 1997 started to work digitally. Since the year 2000 we have scanned and retouched digitally the Mixteca Images careful to preserve this document of a Mexico gone by.

On glancing through my diaries of the late sixties I found the pre-Columbian description of the Lower Mixteca as " Ñundeui " and its translation " at the foot of the sky ." I adopted it as the title for this exhibit, since it means to be at the entrance of the sky, from where I managed to glimpse at this tropical Eden. Although this description corresponds more to a European vision of the Indian world than to reality, it's purity, harmony and integrity were remarkable. To travel the Mixteca Baja in the late sixties, on foot and on horseback, before the arrival of electricity and roads, meant to retreat into the past, into nature and the villages embedded in her.

In these photographs I limit myself to few colors: the green of the vegetation, color of fertility, abundance and tranquillity, the blue of the naguas, color of the sky, the spiritual world and dreams and the moreno of the skin, color of the earth, warm and sensual, and in the words of Gauguin inTahiti " the gold of their bodies. " Complementary to this world in peace appears the red of the necklaces and fajas, the color of warning, passion and danger.

With this exhibit I thank the Instituto Nacional Indigenista of Mexico City and Jamiltepec, Oaxaca, for their support. My gratitude and sympathy goes to the women and men of the Mixteca Baja, who offered their hospitality and cooperation, especially in the villages of San Agustín Chayuco, Santa María Nutío and in the in those days remote and legendary Ixtayutla. I express my gratitude to the late Félix García Mendoza and to his sister Luisa from Santa María Nutío, who made my dream of photographing Indian girls in the river a reality.   I also thank my friend José Luis Merino Chávez, currently image coordinator and chief of public relations for the State of Tlaxcala, who accompanied me on the first trip, the anthropologist Andrés Medina, my companion on the second trip, Jorge Brena, the owner of the Hotel Principal in Oaxaca City, as well as the photographer Walter Reuter, the musician Antonio Zepeda, the sculptor Ricardo Regazzoni and the painter & graphic designer Vicente Rojo for their support in evaluating the work during the late sixties in Mexico City. I thank my ex-assistant Carlos Cerón for scanning and retouching the photographs and the distinguished photographer of pre-Columbian art & artifacts, Michel Zabé, for appreciating them now.

I feel fortunate that these images, locked away for so many years, were exhibited in 2001 for the first time thanks to the distinguished painter Francisco Toledo in Oaxaca, where they were created.

During 2002 I have added seven brief Aztec poems to the photographs. As a next step I would like to exhibit Ñundeui in Mexico City and publish it in a paperback edition.Following this introduction I quote with gratitude Michel Zabé's description of the cover girl:

México City, February 10th. 2004
	Mario Mutschlechner
	Studio M.M. www.mmfotografia.com

Here she stands: impeccable in her essence
present with her jug of clay
elegant in her natural nudity.

Here she stands: between the Olmecan Forefathers
and the Coca Cola.

Her face does not try to please nor to seduce,
neither does it reproach or judge.
Faced with the photographic camera she stands like a tree or a flower,
at the foot of the sky with her feet on the ground of Oaxaca.

A fragile link between God and Mother Earth, she takes care of her cosmic task:
to fetch water from the river.

Few photographs can be looked at as if looking at eternity.
This is one of them. The image of a profound Mexico dying slowly
between the Olmecs and the Coca Cola.

Michel Zabé