PHOTOGRAPHY & STUFF

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Thousands of students in Prague protest the communist regime in November 1989, during the Velvet Revolution, leading to the end of 40 years of communist rule over Czechoslovakia.

Making Time for What Feels Good with Ainslee Costa

#MyStory is a series that spotlights inspiring women in the Instagram community. Join the conversation by sharing your own story. To see more from Ainslee, follow @mysuburbanfarm on Instagram.

“#MyStory is about inspiring others to try something new.” —Ainslee Costa (@mysuburbanfarm), a woodworker from Melbourne, Australia, who runs an asphalt-paving business by day and uses her downtime to craft handmade spoons and crochet hooks.

“I have no formal training. I don’t go to class after class. I do things because I see them and think, ‘That looks interesting. Why can’t I give it a go?’ Too many people hold back because they think they’re not good enough. But you’ll never know if you don’t jump into the deep end and try.

I work around what time is available to me. There are some months where I go full steam ahead; other times, I just go with the ebb and flow. Even when my kids were babies, I felt like I needed to make things. It made me feel good — like I achieved something that was just for me.

Defying Gravity

Visiting Day of the Dead with ‘Las Catrinas’ and @elchadsantos

To discover more Catrinas and Mexican portraits, follow @elchadsantos on Instagram.

(This interview was conducted in Spanish.)

Day of the Dead found Mexican photojournalist Iván “Chad” Santos (@elchadsantos) at a very early age. “When I was four or five years old, I was told that on the 1st and 2nd of November the souls of the dead would come to my house,” he says.

Iván’s initial shock turned into a passion over the years, and now he annually documents the “Catrinaje,” a word he uses to describe those who are disguised or painted as “La Calavera Catrina,” an early 20th-century illustration by Mexican painter José Guadalupe Posada that depicts death.

Iván captures representations of La Catrina because he considers them ephemeral: “Sugar skulls, pan de muerto [bread of the dead] and papel picado [perforated paper] haven’t changed that much since I was a child, but the makeup and characterizations of people last just one day,” he says.