San Isidro strikes a pose

SAN ISIDRO - Imagine you were in a box, creating a small, human diorama that would represent your life and your culture and your home.

Coke Wisdom O'Neal will bring the box.

The New York photographer has been meeting people and snapping pictures in this Starr County community for the past week, and Monday he set up his box, an 18-foot by 25-foot wooden stage, outside San Isidro High School and invited residents to climb inside.

"I'm going to try to get it as many places as possible," O'Neal said. "It was a little difficult to get it here."

Drivers passing on Farm-to-Market 1017 stopped to stare and occasionally consented to climb inside for a shot.

Students from the high school's art classes posed: Hilda Colunga wore her quinceañera dress and goofed around with her friends; Eric Herrera recreated an evening at home with his family, down to the rocking chairs.

A local priest, inspired by his first go-round, even returned to the shoot later in the day with a crucifix and an altar, O'Neal said.

"I've called it a specimen box before. ... it's a way to catalog people scientifically, you know - the person, by itself."

Before this, O'Neal had deployed his specimen box in Manhattan and Queens, New York. A chance connection - a gallery owner, Paige West, whose parents own a Starr County ranch - brought him to San Isidro.

West helped to fund the trip, while ranch hands built a replica of O'Neal's original box. He will set it up at the ranch today, he said, to shoot employees and livestock.

San Isidro art teacher Chris Guerra, however, masterminded Monday's shoot, recruiting subjects, proposing scenarios for her students and inviting the photographer and his camera-wielding friends, Jared Charney and Genevieve Walshe, to campus.

"It was like, nerve-wracking because we're from the ranch and ... people are kind of shy, they didn't want to participate very well. I was having to practically pull teeth," Guerra said, laughing. "It was like, ‘What's the reason behind the box?' "

Indeed, why?

"I feel like the little studio box has been done," O'Neal said. "It's kind of making it absurd, the scale, and it draws people to me."

The photographs will likely be displayed at West's Manhattan gallery, Mixed Greens, although a date has not been set.