Photographer Ben Elwes is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this  photo essay.  From the project ‘Parisina Mexico.

Parisina is a popular high street store in México with 600 outlets throughout the country. It first opened in 1933 in México City and specialises in modern textiles and products related to haberdashery. The stores name Parisina translating to Parisian is an incidental bridge to what inspired me to make the work. In 1938 André Breton and his wife, the French painter, Jacqueline Lamba visited México from Paris and were guests of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera in their Casa Azul in St Angel, México City. On his return to Paris, Breton wrote an article entitled “Souvenir de México” published in the Surrealist magazine Minotaure. Thus, was initiated the link between European Surrealism and México that grew rapidly as European artists sought refuge abroad during and after the Second World War.

In an essay Documents of the marvellous, Rick Poyner writes, “Central to Surrealism is the idea of le merveilleux – the marvellous – alluded to by the movement’s leader André Breton in the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924. ‘Let us not mince words,’ he writes, ‘the marvellous is always beautiful, anything marvellous is beautiful, in fact only the marvellous is beautiful.’…….The Surrealists experienced the marvellous as a kind of jolt or shock, an excitingly disorientating sensation, as though a crack had suddenly opened in the world’s carapace of normality and everything was slipping away.” (Rick Poyner Eye Magazine Autumn 2007)[…]

More: The Historical Connection Between Parisian & Mexican Artists, And Window Curtains