Wilson roams Mexico with lens

By Taylor Mayad Powell

The Meadows Museum, SMU, will kick off its much-anticipated 2025–2026 exhibition season with Roaming Mexico: Laura Wilson, opening Sept. 14, and running through Jan. 11, 2026. This personal and visually rich exhibition will feature nearly 90 photographs — most never before published — by the celebrated Texas photographer. While Wilson is already well known for her captivating images of the American West and striking portraits of renowned authors, her latest exhibition presents photographs taken over the past four decades during her travels across Mexico, from the United States borderlands to Oaxaca and San Miguel de Allende. Laura Wilson (b. 1939), an internationally esteemed documentary photographer, has published six books and contributed work to The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, London’s Sunday Times Magazine, and The Washington Post Magazine, among other publications. Roaming Mexico will be the first presentation of Wilson’s Mexican photography.

At age 85, Wilson continues to capture the human experience with unmatched curiosity and grace. In Roaming Mexico, she offers an expansive, often intimate glimpse of Mexican life — from colorful festivals and quiet village scenes to religious rituals and enduring traditions. 

“It’s not every person’s Mexico — it’s my Mexico,” said Wilson. “Much as in the American West, the Spanish influence is elemental in Mexico. Things we consider icons of Western culture — the horse, the longhorn — came from Spain and gave rise to the vaquero or cowboy. Mexico is culturally vibrant — the literature, the art, the sculpture, the architecture. The architects, the writers, and even the collectors that I have focused on are as much a part of modern Mexico, and of my appreciation of Mexico, as the laboring paisano or the fire-breather.”

Wilson’s photographs present not a singular narrative but a colorful tapestry of contrasts, depicting a Mexico that is equally rural and urban, religious and secular, timeless and evolving. The images exemplify Wilson’s gift for capturing the poetic in the everyday, from manual labor to street festivals.

The Meadows Museum is located on the SMU campus at 5900 Bishop Blvd., Dallas, TX 75205. Parking is free for museum visitors. For more information, go to meadowsmuseumdallas.org.