Using public toilets all over Mexico City completely changed the way I viewed it
The Mexican capital's lavatories may not cope with its creaking sewage system, but what they lack in efficiency they make up for in creative design
I began photographing bathrooms in Mexico City more than a decade ago, when I got a severe case of salmonella that degenerated into chronic ulcerative colitis. Over the several years that I watched helplessly as the life drained out of my rear end, I visited more public bathrooms than anyone else in Mexico City. Running to bathrooms all over the city fundamentally changed the way I viewed it.
In Mexico City, even when your bodily waste gets sucked down the toilet, that doesn't necessarily mean you'll never see it again. The stuff that I and more than 20 million others living in the city dump into its toilets each day sails on a long, strange voyage beneath the streets, through 6,000 miles of pipes, 68 pumping stations and almost 100 miles of canals, tunnels, dykes and artificial lakes that transport these agua negras in and around the city.
