FRAMES Photography Podcast
FRAMES Photography Podcast
Arturo Soto
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In today's episode, W. Scott Olsen talks to a Mexican photographer, writer, and educator, Arturo Soto.
Click here to visit Arturo's website.
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A modernist idea of photography is that it should speak for itself, which of course it's probably one of the greatest myths, and a lot of photographers buy it. And it's one of the first things that they buy is that that is, let's say, the bulk of the medium. Whereas photographs have always been deployed in many different kinds of ways. And as such, there's there they've always been this interaction with words.
SPEAKER_02This photography podcast is brought to you by Frames, quarterly printed photography magazine. Here is your today's host, W. Scott Olston, with another fascinating conversation.
SPEAKER_04Well, hello everyone, and welcome to another podcast from Frames Magazine. My name is Scott Olston, and today, folks, we're going to a kind of photography that is close to my heart, that is just absolutely breathtaking for me in terms of its emotional impact, in terms of its intellectual uh components and background. Um, it is documentary photography, it is fine art photography, a lot of it's black and white, and it is a series of images that portray a kind of view that I don't expect. This is the really cool thing about it. And it's not just contrary, it's it's it's it's a kind of approach to photography that is revealing, that is revelatory, that brings me up short an awful lot of the time because I think I know something, and somebody else says, oh no, Scott, you you don't actually know it at all. Uh in other words, we're talking with Arturo Soto. Arturo is is a Mexican photographer, writer, and educator. Um he's published wonderful, wonderful books. The first one's called In the Heat. The second one was called A Certain Logic of Expectations. And hang on to that title because that's that's an important title for that project. Um he has been all over the place. He won the um Get Ya Photo uh Award in 2023, all sorts of exhibitions and publications. I cannot tell you how happy I am to begin a conversation with Arturo. Arturo, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing, man?
SPEAKER_03Thank you very much. I'm very good, and I'm very happy to be here.
SPEAKER_04Well, I am happy you are here as well. Now, you stay on your website. Um, you give a lot of time over to Georges Perak, a French writer, um, and his ideas you claim as being really a strong influence for your work. So in a minute, I want to get into your own biography, but let's begin with an idea. What is it about his ideas captivated you?
SPEAKER_03Well, his approach to writing, I think, has many um crosspoints with photography. And he developed a concept uh that he that he called the infraordinary, which I think is is very close to a certain kind of photography, a certain kind of approach. Um and by the infraordinary, he meant uh trying to pay attention to everyday life and to non-events, uh things that really seem to not matter at all, but that in the end they represent or they amount to the bulk of our lives. And so if if all of these non-events and and unimportant things are actually what define our lives, then perhaps we should pay more attention to them because they shape our understanding of the world, they influence again our everyday life. And so in the end, they they become really important.
SPEAKER_04Now, photographers tend to be attracted to spectacle, to irony, to you know, places where the seams don't match. This seems to be an approach where you're you're paying attention to, if not celebrating the absolutely mundane, right? That's right.
SPEAKER_03Which, you know, it it's not for everyone. Um I was I was um I'm I'm I'm a part of this uh Facebook group called Flag Photo, and recently someone posted uh something about about a very mundane image and saying that they basically didn't really agree with it. Um so it's the it's an approach that I feel like it's intrinsically linked to the history of photography. It's it's an approach that I think photography does really well, although, of course, you can also see it in contemporary painting and contemporary sculpture. Uh but photography is a great tool to capture your everyday life. And and therefore, when you're trying to um make images that that amount to something, um what surrounds you is it's really good material to do that.
SPEAKER_04It it is at one level really a kind of subtle approach because even though you might say this is mundane, all the art comes in. There's composition, there's light, there's the way to you know arrange elements within a frame. So you are still in the act of projecting significance, even if the subject goes counter to what we might normally assume is significant.
SPEAKER_03Yes, that's right. And you know, writers like Charlotte Cotton and Jerry Badger, they have written about these kinds of images. Badger calls them quiet images. Um and and I think what he means by that, or at least what I understand by that, is images that were made with an intention, but it's not very clear what that intention is, and they function a little bit differently than, let's say, a photojournalistic image of a conflict zone or something like that, in which the purpose of the image and to a certain extent the message of the image is kind of clear. It may still be subtle, of course, but but there's for instance not really, there's there's not really a question of why this image was made. Whereas if you make a picture of some trash on the floor, the first question is like, so what's interesting about this, you know? But then, of course, it's exactly what you mentioned. There's there's still the the standard formal characteristics that are a part of the picture and that need to work in order for that picture to be interesting.
SPEAKER_04How is this different um conceptually from like you know, still life? If I've got a black and white image of a bowl on a table, there's nothing really all that interesting about a bowl on a table. And yet I'll stand in front of that image for hours, you know, appreciating it. Is it the same kind of subtlety, or is there more of a sociological uh riff in in the work that you're doing?
SPEAKER_03Uh I love that question. I think there's a little bit of both. It's not that different from a still life, let's say, if you if you make a picture of a found object on the street. So on the one hand, you know, painting has been doing this for a long time. Uh there's there's all of these um different approaches to still life, starting with with you know uh Dutch Baroque painting, in which they document everyday life objects. But in a lot of those cases, some of these objects are meant to understood symbolically. So they represent more than what they just show. Uh, and that can also apply to photography. So in in many of the images that I make, I'm trying to communicate something beyond what you're seeing. So the picture may be of something, but it's trying to tell you something else, and that's where the sociological part comes in. Um, and sometimes the scene or the object depicted can be understood on a more political level, on a more socioeconomic level. And that's kind of the challenge in trying to make these images communicate something more.
SPEAKER_04And and your work goes contrary to a lot of like PR work or something like that. Um let's start. And I I do want to actually want to get to your background and your education, all that stuff in a second. Um, but your first book, In the Heat, um, is about Panama. And it's not the canal. It's it's not people in well-pressed clothes holding expensive drinks. Describe the book, describe the project, but also describe the intent.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so I ended up in Panama because I was in a relationship with someone back then, and I moved there uh to be together, and I had a hard time kind of assimilating. This is when you realize that not everywhere is the same. Uh, it's obviously a Latin American country, and we share many things, obviously, among Latin Americans. Uh, but every place is a little bit different. And so the kind of societal values that I found there, and I'm hugely generalizing, and I understand that, but you know, we're not necessarily that close to what I was used to in in Mexico and in the other places where I've lived. And so I had again a bit of a hard time. I was also not used to the super uh humid climate, and so the title references that. And a lot of my work is about how I try to capture these urban environments that I'm in. And so, in a way, these projects are great excuses to explore these uh cities and try to understand them, try to see what's more unique about them, try to dismantle a bit this myth that everywhere is the same because of globalization. Um, of course, there are there are many things that are similar now, but there's also many things that are different. And so it's it's the project is trying to capture all of these subtleties about the place and my experience of it.
SPEAKER_04Now, Panama is a relatively colorful place, and your project's all in black and white. And a lot of it is back streets. Um, you know, it's stuff that you would normally drive by and it wouldn't quite register. Why the choice for black and white? And is this a political book?
SPEAKER_03I would hope so. At least that's my intention. I know that a lot of a lot of um other photographers try to shy away from that or try not to make it, you know, so overtly political, but that's not my intention, it's the opposite. Um, so yes, Panama is a very popular tourist destination. And in in like in a lot of places, they're trying to sell you a particular kind of experience. In this case, it's um very influenced by ecotourism, so it's trying to uh promote this idea of nature that you can consume in in a particular way, and on the way to that nature, whatever it may be, the jungle or the beach or whatever, you can stay in Panama City and enjoy, let's say, of the cosmopolitan environment of Panama, which is kind of like uh a mini version of Miami. And so that's kind of the the let's say the standard narrative and the and the one that is pushed by um the government agencies, etc. etc. And so I was reacting to that, and therefore I thought it was more appropriate to photograph it in black and white, uh, which is already a kind of abstraction. And and then yes, trying to focus on spaces that are not the usual ones, although I have to say they're not only, let's say, back alleys, and and that's also what's interesting because many people many people let's say perceive the spaces to be of a particular kind, whereas actually the book has uh a number of let's say mainstream spaces, but just photographed in a way that is trying to to be critical about them or or to reflect at least critically uh on them.
SPEAKER_01Let's take just a quick break. We hope very much that you are enjoying today's episode. The very fact that you are listening to this podcast suggests that photography means a lot to you. And if that's the case, you might want to have a look at Frames, quarterly printed photography magazine. We truly believe that excellent photography belongs on paper. Visit readframes.com to find out more about our publication and use the coupon code podcast to receive a recurring 10% discount on your new frames magazine subscription. And now, back to today's conversation.
SPEAKER_04Okay, you make an interesting distinction there to reflect critically, because there's a difference between sort of being overtly political and being critical or making an argument, saying there are other voices in this conversation as as well. And I one of the things I really, really admire about your photography is that ability to say, you know, gang, there are other voices here, there are other visions here. I mean, take a look at this as well to reflect critically, as you said. I want to get, I want to get to you know, certain logic of expectations here in a second. But I'm I'm looking at your your biography here. You know, you get an undergraduate degree in film and photography from Savannah College of Art. Uh, one of your teachers there um is one of our old uh podcast guests as well, as well, Charles Draub. From there, you gone, you get an MA in art history from University College in London. Uh, and then you go off to get a PhD from Oxford in in fine art. This is heavy education, man. So, and a lot of us that come into photography come in backwards. We come in self-taught, you know, whatever. Um, you've got deep roots into the philosophy, the ideas, the practice, the history, and all that kind of stuff. What your bio doesn't say, though, is what you were doing before you got to Savannah. Tell me how the camera, the image, the whole notion of working in visual storytelling came into your life.
SPEAKER_03I wanted to be a filmmaker. And ever since I was, I don't know, 12 years old, something like that, I thought that I was going to be a filmmaker. That was that was really what I worked towards and my passion, my fantasy, my dream, all of it together.
SPEAKER_04Um is there a video cassette of some early of some early film hiding on a shelf somewhere? Not really, thankfully.
SPEAKER_03But I mean there's been a few exercises, but that that's as good as it gets. Um and yeah, they're they're they would make up for really you know interesting, um cringy moments, I would say. Uh, but no, I so I wanted to be a filmmaker, and along the way, I I realized that I needed to understand the mechanics of the camera, let's say. And I was like, well, if I want to be a serious filmmaker, I need to understand photography. And this is I was still in in uh in what you would call junior high in Mexico. Um after begging for a camera for for a while, my parents bought me one, they've always been very supportive of what I've done, and I started making pictures. I was really into street photography back then, and so I wanted to make pictures a little bit like Cartier Berson. Uh it's it's really difficult when you live with your parents, and you know, the streets of Mexico City don't look anything like the streets of Paris. And so but I I kept at it, and at some point I really fell in love with photography, and so when I was deciding where to study, uh, I decided to go to SCAT because it was a place where I could study both film and photography as a double major. Um and I, you know, it's a decision that I think influenced what I've what my path has been, let's say. But but I'm early, I I am definitely a product of um of institutional uh artistic education for sure.
SPEAKER_04I think a lot of us, you know, we come into photography and we think, oh damn, if I just you started earlier, because there's so much I don't know about the traditions that that I am the beneficiary of or I'm stepping on. But it it gives you a thousand permissions. So you know, look what somebody else did, push that. Look what somebody else did, push that a little bit. Do you remember early kind of awakenings anywhere in your education where you thought, aha, this is cool?
SPEAKER_03Oh, yes. I mean, but that they're not always related to photography. But I went to like the school system in Mexico and the school that I went to really didn't emphasize the arts or the humanities. And so I always felt like I had an artistic sensibility, but because I cannot draw, I didn't have an output for that. And so alongside with photography is when I started writing, and at that time I was writing poetry because I could do it easily, literally, like you know, you just need a pen and paper. And so that was kind of like my first, my first creative output. And and then I loved looking at uh painting books and the history of art uh mostly through painting. And so one of my really early influences is Roy Liechtenstein, the pop artist. Um, he, for me, it is in a way related to George Perek, in the sense that it's trying to elevate the mundane or or things that you take for granted or things that don't seem very serious, like a comic book, into an aesthetic discourse. And of course, I wouldn't have been able to put things in this kind of uh vocabulary um in this kind of way back then. But but I did realize honestly early on that let's say what Waterhol or what Liechtenstein were doing was really interesting because they were kind of like going against the current in trying to make something serious out of things that didn't come with that um with that label, let's say.
SPEAKER_04Okay. You just gave me an idea, and all you book editors that are listening out there, um, so many photographers talk about painting, either appreciating it or giving it a shot or whatever. We we ought to have a book of of favorite paintings chosen by photographers.
SPEAKER_03That's a great idea.
SPEAKER_04You know, and so the whole book, the whole book would be nothing but but, you know, famous paintings or not infamous paintings, but curated by people working with cameras. That that would be an interesting uh sort of psychoanalysis for all of us.
SPEAKER_03Uh it would say a lot about the medium as well.
SPEAKER_04It would. It would. And and I wonder how many of us would would pick stuff that is completely unlike what we do with a camera. As I'm just sitting here thinking this now, you know, the ones that I would put in there do not reflect anything about what I do with it with the camera, but my God, they were inspiring at some point in my life. So, okay, you toodle off then to England and and you go to Oxford. First of all, what was your dissertation?
SPEAKER_03So it was about the confluence of images and words, and how words can transform or expand or change the meaning of photographs.
SPEAKER_04Oh my. Okay, and now I got something to put on my reading list here. Tell me more.
SPEAKER_03Well a modernist idea of photography is that it should speak for itself, which of course it's probably one of the greatest myths, and a lot of photographers buy it. Uh and it's one of the first things that they buy is that that is, let's say, the bulk of the medium. Whereas photographs have always been deployed in many different kinds of ways, and as such, there's there they've always been this interaction with words. Uh if you want, let's say, to just concentrate on fine art photographs, it's still been the case that many pictures have been paired or kind of like existed alongside words. And so I'm interested in how any kind of, let's say, verbal formulation can have an effect on how the image is understood. So it can be something as simple as, let's say, the title of a series, even if let's say the individual images of that series are untitled. But this title now has, of course, a huge influence on how you perceive this group of images. It can be a caption in the case of uh photojournalistic images, and let's say in that case, the caption can provide information that you would have been never able to guess just by looking at the image, and that's when it becomes really interesting. Um it can also be information that is redundant because, in a way, you could have gotten the same kind of information just by looking at it. In that case, it's not that interesting. But of course, you know, there's many books that pair uh poetry with photography, different kinds of artist books, uh, in which, let's say, a graphic designer and a and a photographer and maybe a writer uh made kind of like an artist book together. Uh, then there's also people like Wright Morris, who wrote novels that incorporated photos. Photographs, you know, there's contemporary practices like Sophie Cal, who make these kinds of narratives that rely on words to tell different kinds of stories. So the possibilities are endless. And in all of those cases, the photographs and the words are each bringing something to the table to kind of like uh compound the effect uh that they have.
SPEAKER_04When you're out in the field and you're shooting, are you thinking with words also in mind, with captions or contextualization of some sort?
SPEAKER_03Uh yes. So when I was in Oxford, the PhD was a practice-based one. So that means that there's a thesis, but there's also the work that you make, and both of them are the results of the of your research. My project was photographing in Oxford, and I knew that I was going to do a photo book that combined uh stories and photographs. And so I did both of them concurrently. I would write these paragraph-long reflections or whatever you want to call them, as as I was photographing. And so they influenced uh each other, let's say.
SPEAKER_04Okay. You know, let's talk about a certain logic of expectations, because in in the world, imagination, Oxford is is um a stereotype. You know, it everybody is walking around in academic robes and speaking slowly and enunciating well and drinking sherry in the afternoons. Um it it is a place of perpetual late afternoon cricket games and and you know, lawn tennis or something. The reality, of course, is that the city has some of that, but a great deal more as well. So tell, I mean, and I love the title, a certain logic of expectations, because if I go to Oxford, I expect the Oxford of myth. It's it's somewhat there and somewhat not. Tell me about the project.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so Oxford is one of these cities that most people associate with a with a limited number of things. That's not to say that that's wrong, because obviously we all have mental images and expectations of of everything, let alone cities. So it's not like it's wrong to have them, but it sometimes people just go there to confirm, let's say, what they know, um, rather than form an opinion based on what they see. And and and this aspect is what's interesting because a lot of people go for a day, don't leave the city center, because the city center is where most of these really beautiful buildings are, and then they don't really get an idea of the city. That that's not always the case in every city, because for instance, sometimes in order for you to reach the beautiful bit of a city, you actually have to go through other parts. Uh, but in Oxford that's not the case. And so you can come and go, look at these beautiful buildings, kind of like reinforce some of these myths, which by the way, the university is very interested in upkeeping because they sell very well. And so, you know, you never see, let's say, the more traditional and perhaps more mundane and more expected, even aspects of the city and how it's a dysfunctional city like most cities. Uh, and so I'm interested in exploring those things, but also I'm interested in let's say making the kinds of pictures that I make, which are documentary and straightforward, but in how they can elicit emotions and or how can they reflect my own emotions. And it's very hard for images to be read in a very particular way. And so that's also where the writing comes in, because I can show you something, but then if I pair it with texts, well, it that relationship between, let's say, getting the the a certain emotional reading from a text is a little bit more straightforward.
SPEAKER_04Absolutely. And I'm gonna ping pong here a little bit, going back to your artist statement on your website. You say um, you know, Soto's interested in exploring the relationship between places and states of mind through a sequence of images that capture a range of values located in the urban environment, including those elicited by his effects and desires. Number of interesting touch points in that phrase. Relationship between places and states of mind, um, and images that capture a range of values. Now, take that and look at certain logic of expectations, the book. The narrative in the text in here is personal narrative. I mean, I'm looking at one right now. You know, on Sundays, when my life is particularly dull, I force myself to leave my room and you're wandering around uh downtown. How much of this book is really giving voice or celebrating this relationship between image and state of mind, between documenting the outside world and then the internal values and narrative of the observer? In 10 words or less. Yes.
SPEAKER_03Well, uh again, photographers when they photograph, they're always thinking of something, and obviously they're influenced also by their own emotions. So that is always the case. The problem is that it's very hard to read those all from the image, you know. So it's not that it doesn't happen. It's just that this is a problem that all art has, in which it's still trying to communicate something, but then how do you really make those things so that an audience can can perceive them? Uh, and there's there's obviously many ways, you know, in in in a lot of cases it can be an artist statement on a wall, uh a curatorial statement. Sometimes it's interviews like this, which is it was part of something that I researched, you know. Sometimes you already know, let's say, what something is about, which happens a lot with films, for instance, because because you've you've um firsthand or secondhand you've listened or known what the the story is about or whether the film is good or not. So there's many ways in which we already form perceptions a priori, uh, sometimes before even encountering a work of art. And so again, all all of these ideas, um, emotions are there, but they're they're not necessarily um communicable, let's say, with with a particular degree of certainty. And words can make that happen very easily. If you title something in a particular way, well then you're kind of like directing the the viewer or the reader towards a particular interpretation. And so all of these texts, which were influenced by you know particular writers, uh, were trying to explore the city. Uh, they were also trying to show certain things that are hard to communicate with images. And that that's another aspect that I was interested in. You know, how to say things, let's say, with the most appropriate medium. Some things cannot be really described in words, some things are really hard to depict uh with images. So by pairing these two mediums, a third kind of meaning is created.
SPEAKER_04You know, oftentimes I've heard people refer to um the musical idea of a chord um as being what you're saying here, because when you play a chord, you're playing, you know, four or five, you know, three, four, five separate notes. What we hear, you know, the bringing of all together, is actually never played. Um, you know, we're we're doing that joining in our heads as we listen to it. If I were to ask you if this book is most is about Oxford or about yourself, you're gonna say yes to both. But somebody else, and I'm I'm struggling now to remember who, uh, made the argument that every photograph, no matter what, every photograph is an act of autobiography. Would you buy that?
SPEAKER_03No, no, especially with photography. In fact, I would say hopefully the book is more about Oxford than me. I am kind of like, let's say, the conduit or the narrator or the tour guide, if you want. And and of course, there's aspects about me there because it is like sometimes literally biographical. But one of my rules, let's say, when making the the book, was that everything always had to relate to space, you know, uh spaces in you know the environment. Um so it it needed to comment on some sort of spatial aspect, even if it was, let's say, or it seemed to be about me, a reflection about the city had to be there. And so the pictures, for instance, are not about me, they're all about the city. And so I came up with another kind of rule, which is the book has two different kinds of images. One are square and the other ones are rectangular. There's many books about Oxford already that celebrate its famous architecture, which is really beautiful. And so, um, because it's a medieval city, right? And so the university kind of like the the city developed as the university developed, uh, and it's um the second oldest existing university in Europe. And so there's a lot of these buildings, therefore, there's a lot of these books that compile these beautiful buildings, and so I didn't want to photograph what other people have photographed and photographed very well in many cases. And so I wanted to stay away from showing, let's say, those beautiful sites. And so the square images in the book capture places of the university, but in a way that you probably wouldn't expect. And then the rectangular buildings are made outside of the city center, which is what most, let's say, day tourists don't get to see. And but on the other hand, those places are what really make Oxford a regular modern city, you know, with the same problems that any other city has, plus some very specific ones that, for instance, have to do with this split between who is a member of the university and can access some of these beautiful places and the many people that live in Oxford that are not part of the university and that therefore are excluded from these spaces.
SPEAKER_04I I want to get to some of the new work that you're doing here, real quick. But one of my favorites in your portfolio is a relatively old project now, because there's a difference between sadness and poignancy. And your project from Savannah, All Lovely Things Will Have an Ending. Um, you know, my my first blush looking at is oh, this is sad. No, it's not actually sad at all. It's poignant. It it is melancholy in the best sense of that word. Talk to me about that project a little bit, because this this is just beautiful.
SPEAKER_03Well, I'm I'm glad you use the word uh melancholy, because everybody runs for the hills when they hear that word. But it is actually for me. I actually like it. And I don't always see it as negative, nor do I always see it as um as cheesy, you know. I think like you you can feed off from any kind of emotion and then and then you know go from there and see what happens. And so I made those pictures when I had finished my undergraduate degree. Uh I I stuck around in Savannah for a few months afterwards, and so I made them literally once I was done with the degree. And I had just in my mind, I was like, there's there's a lot of pictures that I was never able to do because sometimes you get obviously caught up in the in the classes and the requirements for the classes or whatever. And so I made all of those pictures also using slide film, which is something that I had never used with a medium format before. So it was my way of experimenting uh with slide film, for which you have to be as precise as possible in your exposure. And so it's it's it's complicated. Uh, there's there's uh many opportunities for messing it up. I was also really trying to explore the city in a in a different way. So you can see that some of these ideas come up again and again of trying to basically build a visual counter-narrative of the city. Uh and so in in a similar way to Oxford, Savannah is very is very beautiful. Uh a lot of people don't go there for the day, they don't really see a lot of these other kinds of spaces that again are are necessary even for savannah to be a complex city. And and so these spaces were already disappearing when I was there, and this is 200 uh and six. And so I was really concerned about let's say the future of the city, given what I was seeing, which which was like rapid development, uh a beautification of everything, and making a lot of these interstitial spaces kind of feel as if they didn't belong. When sociologically speaking, you need all of these spaces because uh they serve many different kinds of purposes aesthetically, in terms of use, in terms of how people feel that they belong. And so when you get rid of all of these spaces, you really start homogenizing the city in uh in an unfortunate way.
SPEAKER_04There are not a lot of people in your images.
SPEAKER_03No. Okay, why? Well, because if you don't photograph people, the emphasis is solely on the place. And and then at least my my idea is that now you have, or like as a viewer, you have to really figure out why you're looking at this image, what the image is trying to tell you in the best of cases, trying to determine the social dynamics of these uh places, etc. etc. And that can get a bit lost if you include figures or or or people in in the photographs, because sometimes it may seem like the picture is about the individual when in reality I want to make it about the place itself.
SPEAKER_04But okay. Do you uh just as a matter of practice, do you often have to wait for a scene to clear? Do you sit there and say, you come on, folks, hurry up, get out of the frame?
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. And I've I've waited, you know, up to an hour sometimes for someone to just or like for like people to clear the the particular tiny bit that that it's in the frame, you know. Obviously, if I wait for that long, it's because I feel like what I'm photographing has a lot of potential. Um it it doesn't always turn out to be, you know, as as exciting as as when I was there at the moment, but but yes, there's a lot of waiting around for people to to uh move out of the frame.
SPEAKER_04Um just out of curiosity, what are you still using medium format? Or do you got a big setup when you're doing this, or is this all with a little you know DSLR?
SPEAKER_03Oh no, I I've never used uh digital uh for my for my projects. Yeah, so all of these are analog. I have nothing against digital, I like it, it's just not what I prefer to use because it changes the methodology of of how I shoot, basically. Uh and I've shot with uh 35, medium format, large format uh the projects on my website, uh, different ones use different formats.
SPEAKER_04Okay. Because I've noticed if you set up a camera in public or a tripod, you know, a big rig in in public, people almost instinctively try to get out of your way. It's like, oh, I don't want to, you know, I don't want to mess up your shot. I don't want you, so they they tend to run to the front to the edges um if they see you setting up.
SPEAKER_03It depends on how busy this the street is. And so some of these streets are really busy and and you know, it would be almost impossible for people to very purposefully move out of your way. And so that's when you just have to wait.
SPEAKER_04You know, without people in it, though, your images have a strong narrative component to them. How do you go about thinking about in just in terms of composition, uh, how do you go about incorporating storytelling into people-less images?
SPEAKER_03That's when them being serious becomes crucial because you're not trying to say everything with just one image, right? It's with it's it's via the interplay of images that you can communicate uh or at least suggest some of these narrative elements uh and and yeah, narrative in the sense of a sequence of images and not necessarily in terms of a plot, right? Because it's not like you're telling a story, but it's also true that if you bring a lot of images together, almost out of out of um logic, the some some sort of um of narrative would be suggested, uh, again, even if it's narrative in in more in a sequential way rather than understanding it as a plot, as you would use narrative in, let's say, right, a novel or a short story.
SPEAKER_04Well, I you know, let's jump forward, or jump forward and back a little bit. Um, you're working now on a really, really cool project called Border Documents, which is you know looking at El Paso and Juarez, Mexico together because you've got family history here. You've got you know real deep connections here. So I'm gonna ask you about some of the images. Um, but first of all, describe the project, where it came from, what you're trying to do, that stuff.
SPEAKER_03I was born in Juarez. Uh, I never lived there, but my father is from there, so he wanted me to be born there as well. As I was growing up, my family would go basically every chance, every chance we had. Uh, also all of all of our holidays uh were in Juarez and El Paso. Uh we loved going shopping, and so that that was always a plus. Uh, but you know, the my my father's side of the family is there. I grew up, you know, having this this sense of the border, uh, this sense of um what everyday life in the border is like, and how complex transnational lives are, how porous the border is. And so Juarez became a really violent place uh towards the end of the 90s, and it continued to be so for many years. It's still it's still so, but but but less, uh at least in the in the last few years. And as the city became or or was going through this rough period, I just remember some of the stories that my father used to tell us as we were growing up. The the city as I was seeing it didn't really correspond uh with the city of his memories, and and that became really interesting to me. So I decided to you know collaborate with him in the sense that um I interviewed him to um get the stories uh from him, and then we went together in 2016 and I photographed the places where these stories had taken place. And so in this case, for instance, there is a one-to-one relation between the texts and the images, whereas in a certain logic of expectations, the texts and the images are about the same place but have nothing to do with each other.
SPEAKER_04So this is um, you know, uh I want to use the word memoir, but not so much a memoir of you, but a memoir of your father's experiences and you as the narrator of that, right?
SPEAKER_03That's right. So he would tell me the story, but I don't know if it's happened to you when someone tells you a story, particularly when you request a particular story, sometimes it can go in a million different directions. And you're like, well, actually, I'm just interested in this bit because it illustrates something interesting. I kind of shape the stories in a literary way. Um I wanted them to be short, to create some sort of visual correspondence between the images and the texts.
SPEAKER_04Sitting here thinking, you know, in my own experience, um, family stories tend to be long-term. In other words, you hear it first when you're three, you hear it again when you're four, um, you know, and the stories come up at holidays, gatherings, you know, whatever. So they're sort of consistently in the air as you grow up. Um, you know, I would hear about my father's dairy farm, for example. Uh, I can't remember ever anyone not hearing about it. So, how did how did you go about selecting stories to then go out with your father and photograph?
SPEAKER_03For the most part, it's a little bit like in the Oxford book, in that I wanted stories that sure were endearing and funny, but that also said something about the place or the dynamics of the border, the social dynamics of the border. So they're trying to weave together several aspects, let's say, of everyday life in Juarez, which is important because once things got really violent, um, let's say in the last 20 years, 25 years, the media emphasis was solely on representing that violence. And so I wanted to show a different kind of approach to to representing the border. And so, in the best of cases, the stories are about a familial aspect, let's say, uh a biographical aspect, but also they say something about the socioeconomics or politics of the border as well. So that that that was kind of like the Way in which I, let's say, picked one story over another one.
SPEAKER_04Do you do you have a favorite or or one that's among the favorites?
SPEAKER_03My father used to, he was always like very diligent, and he grew up in a family where not every not everyone was, and he was a family of eight uh siblings. He was always very hardworking, he always liked keeping busy. And one of the things that I like, for instance, is that uh I grew up in a way in a very sheltered, boring life in Mexico City. Whereas when in in his stories, when he's when he's a kid, he's always out, literally, always out, and and just having this this rich life on the streets, which is you know, things have changed from then, obviously. And and so he when he was uh I don't remember exactly how old he was, but let's say 12, he started working uh in the neighborhood's grocery store. He would see all kinds of characters come to the store. And one of his favorites was this musician that he would play in the cantinas in in Juarez, and so he would sometimes come really early, kind of between tired and a little bit hungover. He would buy a lot of things in the store and just eat them right there. And the store wasn't a restaurant, but what my father remembers is that the woman who owned the store had a good relationship with this musician, and so sometimes she would make him uh eggs, like scrambled eggs on the back, and then just bring them to him. But what my father remembers is that he would eat like a lot of everything because he was a big guy, and so uh he would open like several, you know, like tins of can of canned goods and and eat like you know, two liters of coke. Uh, and this was just for breakfast. And you know, when when he got really good was when after all of that, uh he would sing a song.
SPEAKER_04Um you say in the text here, and then and by the way, folks, this is the there's a wonderful thing in Granta magazine that that's describing this project. Um, Granta is one of my favorite magazines. Absolutely wonderful, wonderful piece here. But two ideas you know, I I'd love to hear you say a little bit more about. You say in here the past cannot be restored, but it can be conjured for insight into the current state of things. So is photography insistently about today?
SPEAKER_03Well, that's the paradox, right? It's it's a little bit about the present and it's the the moment depicted, it's ever present. It's it it will always show as it was when you press the shutter, but obviously also as soon as you press the shutter, it's already the past. And so then it depends on what you photograph, but of course it can also signal the future, right? Uh if let's say, just you know, for argument's sake, you make a picture of a building being built. Well, it's not showing you the future, but it's kind of like hinting at the future. You can see that or the picture can start conjuring up these images of, let's say, when the building will be finished, right? So the temporalities of an image can be really complex, and you can play with that uh even further when you add text.
SPEAKER_04Oh man. Um you say here again, you you talk, you're describing talking to your father after the project was underway or done. You say, I asked him whether evoking some of these episodes have been painful. The real torment, he told me, was all those details, textures, and voices that were now out of reach. Otherwise, seeing and thinking about these places brought him a unique joy that was difficult to describe. What a lovely explanation of the anguish that this is gone and the joy that I can somehow approach it. Is that what photography finally is, both pain and pleasure?
SPEAKER_03I think so. I think so. And and I think in the best of cases, you have that experience as a maker, but I think at least my challenge is in trying to um share that experience with the viewer, you know, so that so that you go through this emotional journey in the same way that happens when you listen to a piece of music or you watch a film or you read a novel. It's just coming up with these strategies so that so that the images become emotional. And, you know, photography I think it's also a very good tool to try to say something about our about our present, you know. And it just happens to be that sometimes the present kind of signals signals to the past.
SPEAKER_04I would argue that every photographer is at some level a historian. And that that gives me great pleasure because the faculty in the history department at the college where I teach, they describe the history program as being proactive. That you know, the way we're gonna make a better future is to really pay attention to the past. And I see that as being one of the foundations of what we're doing in photography as well. Artori, tell me what you're working on now.
SPEAKER_03Right now, I am living in Wales, where I am teaching. And so I've been living here for a year and a half in a small coastal town called Aberistwith. And I've lived in England for about seven years, and yet uh before moving here, I had never been to Wales. And so I am very interested in the specificities and singularities of Welsh identity and how you can see that in the urban landscape. Um, and so I am photographing in this in this small place and let's say focusing on the things that make Welshness real or more real.
SPEAKER_04Oh, I'm not jealous at all, man. Just so you know, just I think that's that. Oh, God. Okay, I'm gonna come visit. It's a beautiful place. It well, I I have been to a great many places in the UK, but I've never been to Wales. And it's on my list. I gotta get there someday. But also, what a cool project. I'm a fan that this work is spectacular at every level. The ideas are inspiring. I I appreciate your time today, man. Thank you very much. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00It was fantastic talking to you.com.