In a world saturated with noise, Pepe Soho taught us to listen, to the wind curling through mangroves, the hush of cenotes, the heartbeat of the jungle. On October 10, that voice went quiet. The acclaimed Mexican photographer, visual storyteller, and founder of Tulum’s Mystika Museum died of cardiac arrest in his Mexico City home. He was 52.
The announcement rippled through social media like a tide of light and loss: “The essence of Pepe Soho is unique. He transcended, but his light remains in every image, every lesson, every way he inspired us to live. His art is a gift we’ll continue to open each day.”
Born José Askenazi Cohen, Soho was not just an artist, but a soul sculpted by pain, curiosity, and reinvention. And perhaps more than anywhere else, it was in Tulum that he found a mirror for that journey, its wild, sacred landscapes becoming both his subject and sanctuary.
A second life through the lens
Before the camera, there was music, fashion, and business. Pepe Soho’s early life unfolded in eclectic chapters, drumming in rock bands, designing clothes, building enterprises. But fate doesn’t send invitations. In his 40s, a brutal accident in India shattered both his knees and thrust him into a long, uncertain rehabilitation.
That quiet suffering gave way to something rare.
During those months of recovery, he picked up the camera again, an old hobby that once flickered in his youth. This time, it wasn’t a pastime. It was survival. He turned his lens to the natural world, as if seeking a language deeper than speech, and found in it what he later called “a method of spiritual healing.”
Tulum, with its tangled green veins and sacred light, pulled him in like gravity. It was here he began to shape a philosophy rooted in presence and reverence for the earth. His immersive photography wasn’t about spectacle. It was about remembrance, of what we are, where we come from, and what we often forget to see.
Mystika: where image becomes experience
In 2017, Soho opened his first gallery in Playa del Carmen, tucked into the humming artery of Quinta Avenida. It was a calculated step, perhaps, but also one of devotion. “This region has my heart,” he told The Tulum Times. “I love the nature here. It might be the most visited place in the world, and the diversity of the Riviera Maya’s landscape, it’s magic.”
By 2021, that magic had found its temple.
Mystika Museum opened its doors in Tulum, offering an immersive experience that blurred the boundaries between photography, meditation, and memory. Visitors didn’t just see his images, they walked through them, breathed with them. Using monumental formats and surround sound, Mystika reconnected the viewer to the rawness of nature through spiritual awe.
From the pink-hued lagoons of Las Coloradas to the cosmic domes of Chichén Itzá, from the jaguar-guarded temples to the luminous cenotes of Quintana Roo, Soho’s work wasn’t just about Mexico’s beauty, it was about our relationship to it.
One installation, titled Sanctuary, surrounded viewers with stars as they stood barefoot, the galaxy unfolding like a silent choir. Another, The Awakening, dropped them into the green lungs of the Chiapas jungle. “You’re not just observing,” one visitor recalled. “You’re remembering.”
From private pain to public gold
In 2017, Soho’s photo “Believe,” shot in the towering wilderness of Torres del Paine, Chile, won the gold medal at the World Photographic Cup in Yokohama, Japan. It was an unexpected recognition, but not undeserved.
“The Mexican photography committee reached out to me. I wasn’t looking for awards, but I knew Believe had that energy. If it resonated with judges the way it did with people online, I thought it could go far,” he told a local media outlet.
He was right. The photo became a finalist, and ultimately took the top prize, changing the trajectory of his career. “I didn’t seek it, but it gave me the chance to share my work with more people,” he reflected back then.
This wasn’t vanity. For Soho, art wasn’t about ego, it was about connection.
A citizen of Tulum, in spirit and in soil
Though born in Mexico City, Soho became, over time, a citizen of Tulum in the truest sense. He photographed its skies with the intimacy of someone who’d stared at them night after night, waiting for the right shadow. He knew its textures, its sacred geometry, its quiet. His love for the Riviera Maya wasn’t abstract, it was documented in thousands of frames, each one a prayer.
He often spoke of nature not as a backdrop, but as a teacher. His photographs were testimonies of encounters with animals, with light, with the unknown. “Nature doesn’t need to prove anything,” he once said. “It just is. And if we can learn to see it, we can learn to be again.”
That philosophy became a heartbeat within Mystika Inmersivo, his traveling exhibition that enchanted Mexico City with a sensory journey through 45 images, from star-blasted skies to the hidden sigh of cenotes.
A final offering of light
In the days following his death, tributes from admirers, artists, and travelers flooded the internet. Some had visited Mystika and left changed. Others had only known him through pixels. But the message was constant: Pepe Soho’s work made people feel something real.
There’s a kind of silence in his passing that mirrors his photographs. Vast. Echoing. Filled with awe.
And perhaps that’s the mark of a true artist, not how loudly he shouts into the world, but how deeply he invites us to listen.
What remains
The loss of Pepe Soho leaves a space that no gallery can fill. But his images remain, etched into the cultural memory of Tulum and beyond. His legacy isn’t just in photographs, it’s in the act of looking again. Slower. Deeper. With reverence.
As Tulum continues to evolve under the pressures of tourism and development, artists like Soho remind us what’s at stake: not just the environment, but the soul of the place.
What would it mean to protect not just the land, but the silence it offers?