Otavalo, Ecuador is a town renowned for it’s lively, colorful Saturday markets, which draw in scores of merchants from surrounding regions to hawk everything from hats to hogs. The town is nestled in among the majestic mountains northeast of Quito, in a region in which some of the country’s most beautiful scenery and timeless native villages are found. The clamor and vitality of the Otavalo market and its inhabitants are characteristics of Andean Ecuadorean culture in general—and it is this spirit that resonates through the work of Otavalo-born photographer Hugo Cifuentes.

The current exhibition of Cifuentes’ photographs at Throckmorton Fine Art reads, upon first glance, as an encyclopedia of human moods and emotions, ranging from the serene to the smug to the boisterous. There is a singular element that unites Cifuentes’ pictures: his subject is (superficially, at least) always human, cropped with a cinematic air, and vibrating with life. Throughout the gallery, playful images abound. In "Fauno" (Faun), a human in a very convincing ram’s head mask sits aside a ram (or is it a second mask?) in an urban plaza. The faun gives us a sidelong glance as the adjacent ram looks on in wonderment. Nearby, in "Llanta Baja" (Low Tire), a man seems to be tending to the chassis of his donkey. El "Enmascarado de Saquisilí" (The Masked Man from Saquisilí) jumps startlingly into our line of sight in a picture frame around the corner; and in the corridor, a man’s rear and feet project toward us as he tips his body under the open hood of a car to troubleshoot in "El Supermecanico" (The Supermechanic). Interspersed between such sarcastic and prankish pictures are more contemplative images. "El Niño de los Tejados" (The Tile Roof Boy) captures from above a series of patterned roof-tops an exaggeratedly small young boy in the narrow space between the houses. And "La Pareja de la Esquina" (The couple in the corner) offers up the marked silence of a town following the departure of a funeral procession, with lingering reminders in the two central brass horns and the black-clothed man cropped out of the right-hand corner.

If there is a more specific overall theme to many of these photos, it is childhood. Cifuentes’ lens focuses on children in many of the images here, often finding them in the irresistible poses that come with the territory of youth and innocence. A young child, pants down, boldly displays his bare rear-end in the foreground of "Pudor" (Bashfulness), while a cluster of fedora-clad women behind him react with horror. In "Camino a la Tumba," Cifuentes isolates a small child carrying a towering cross, wearing an expression of indignation and determination that only children wear. The poignant "El Hijo del Olvido" (The Son of the Forgotten) captures a small child asleep suspended in the handlebar crook of an abandoned bicycle. Children also sleep in unlikely places in "El Nino del Pollo y la Herradura" (The Chickens Boy and the Horseshoe), and "Accidente en Suenos" (Accident in Dreams), in which a boy lies on a bed of posters in a shop; he sleeps on an exotic image of a woman adorned minimally in seashells, while a glossy multi-wheeler truck hang overhead (one tends to think "Accident" is perhaps not the right word).

Among the abundant images of children are several images of children with dolls; in many of these pictures, the dolls become central, and are endowed with importance through their treatment as subjects. The doll in "Beso de Vida" (Kiss of Life) is no less alive for the viewer than the young girl (of the same size) who hold her to her face to kiss her, and the title of "Muñecas Despues del Baño" (Dolls after a bath) speaks for the image itself. Lifeless objects are animated in other pictures as well. A woman dances happily with a lively, swirling broom in "Barriendo el Cuartito" (Sweeping the Small Room), and a trumpet gloats and demands attention in "La Trompeta." In "Procesión Salasaca," men in sombreros lined up along a mountain path are accompanied by a trail of aloe plants in similar formation. This echoing of human forms by objects is also repeated in a number of other photos in which objects, often of devotional nature, are likewise bestowed lifelike importance. Religious processional candles mirror devotees in "Cirios Y Manos" (Candles and Hands), and statues and objects take on human proportions in "El Tupo de Plata" and "A Dónde Cansados Pies?" (Where to Tired Feet?).

Cifuentes’ photos, playful as they seem, are not devoid of commentary, as evidenced in his elevation of religious objects and his tendency to heighten mood in many instances. Although one may read his images of Catholic ritual as suggestive of the complexity of a syncretic culture marked by colonial and post-colonial influence, they are not overtly so. The majority of Cifuentes’ photos are not weighed by a quest to evaluate, nor by sadness, regret or commentary. Above all, Cifuentes appears to have aimed to capture the spirit and variety of life in Andean culture, and he succeeds in this. His photographs are at heart a celebration of humanity, and an exploration of humanity’s inherent, day-to-day, emotional and spiritual diversity and complexities.