All my encounters

What pieces or projects have you been working on lately?
The last photographs I took were on film. The project is simple: the everyday. To capture the chronicle of what always happens, of that which perhaps wasn't worthy of our gaze simply because it's always there. A shadow. A flash of light. A wall. Nothing is valuable until we observe it. There's nothing abstract; they're more like stories. I believe everything is waiting to be told.   

What did you learn (or unlearn) while working on them?
Perhaps to understand that not everything has to be conceptual. That concepts sometimes tend toward pretension, and I deeply want to distance myself from that. Pretension is something that isn't. Reality, on the other hand, is what it is. A photograph of public transport holds many stories. Laughter. Tears. Despair. Haste. It can be everything to someone. Memories of the life lived there. An image that, in some way, always lives on.

I learned that an image can contain everything, but it only makes sense when someone looks at it. And it depends on who. And it depends on how. But that's not something I control. I suppose it's part of an artist's process: letting go. It sounds simple. It isn't. Especially not in a world of circles, of pure entropy.

Through photography I return to all those places, but I have to let them go. We are only visitors. I am in that process.

What words, ideas or emotions were going through your head?
Working with the everyday, for me, is working from the heart, against the grain, and from a place of nostalgia. Portraits are also memories, and I believe that's the main idea behind my work: memory, the nostalgia that something happened here.  

Were there any conversations, movies, music, or books that made their way into that work?
One of the novels that most influenced that series of photographs was "On Earth We Are Briefly Grand" by Ocean Vuong. It's a beautiful story that touches on diverse realities: migration, poverty, homosexuality. It's brilliant. That's where I got the idea: not to create stories, but to capture real ones.

Laura Cohen's photography was also a source of inspiration, but more from a technical and compositional standpoint than a nostalgic one. Playing with exposures, daring to use contrasts, and striving for perfect geometry.   

What's been the most difficult thing you've faced recently in your creative process?
Trying to do something “different.” It bothers me to think that word adds value to a piece of work. Something like “thinking outside the box,” as if that were a guarantee of great work. I don’t know. I question it. I don’t want to be misunderstood; I put all my effort and knowledge into my photographs, but I find it difficult to find that line between something “different” that manages to avoid being pretentious. I don’t mean that everything has to be the same, either. Just that an unpretentious perspective can be something. That’s what I’m looking for. That’s what interests me. Enough with the nonsense.

What is your favorite restaurant and what do you recommend we order?
I recently went to a pizzeria here in Aguascalientes called Diavolo Rosso. It's wood-fired pizza and it's on a corner, because the best food is only found on corners. That and the barbacoa tacos at La Purísima. I think I love eating straight from my hands, and I suppose there's something analogous about that.  

If your life were a movie this month, what would it be called and who would write the soundtrack?
“All My Encounters” and the soundtrack would be by El Mató a un Policía Motorizado. Or maybe Olivia Dean. Most likely Olivia Dean. Because I'm in love.

Recommend one or more artists you follow who inspire you, and tell us what you like most about their work or their way of working.
I would start with Pris- She has a really lovely project called @abordandome and also makes ceramics and digital illustrations. More people should get to know her. And another one would be... Mitu Rozenmuter, she's a fantastic photographer whose heart is divided between Argentina and Mexico. Her photos inspire me.