PHOTOGRAPHY: Malcolm Venville's Mexico City Masquerade

In 2005, propelled in part, he says, by Andre Breton's remark that Mexico City "is the last surrealist city in the world," photographer/director Malcolm Venville shot some 120 large-format portraits of the masked Mexican wrestlers known as luchadores, now available in a limited-edition book called Lucha Loco. (The title, translated as "crazy grapple," is what Mexican fans fondly call lucha libre or "free fighting.") "Lucha loco represents something that is missing from life in the Western world since the disappearance of the circus and vaudeville," says Venville. "There's poetry in its vibrant and expressive style." In addition, as a child of profoundly deaf parents, Venville says he's "fascinated with the unspoken language and still countenance of the luchador mask." The book is the first release of Therapy Publishing, an offshoot of Venville's Therapy Films. See LuchaLoco.com for details.