On this side

What pieces or projects have you been working on lately?
I am currently working on a personal documentary about memory and how we represent on screen those who have passed away. For this, I draw on my relationship with the memory of my father, who passed away 24 years ago. While creating this documentary, which is built mainly from archival footage, voice, and many hours of editing, going out to take photos on the streets of Brussels has become an important contrast: allowing me to breathe, rethink ideas, and juxtapose the past with a very fleeting, immediate present.

What did you learn (or unlearn) while working on them?
I’ve been reflecting a lot on the temporality of the image and on how distance is an important factor in reading it. Not just physical distance, but also the critical distance that comes with the passage of time, with the materiality of the format and medium, particularly when working with archival footage.

What words, ideas or emotions were going through your head?
When does an image become an archive, and when does it become a memory?

Were there any conversations, movies, music, or books that made their way into that work?
As a filmmaker, my photographic practice is closely linked to cinema and its language. But it also emerges from cinema’s impossibility to freeze, to simplify itself. Many of my photographs are inspired by the possible story behind the situations I capture, while others resemble the type of cinema I most enjoy, the kind that moves beyond narrative and focuses on the spaces in between. For this specific project, my inspirations include News from Home, by Chantal Akerman, Tokio-Ga, by Wim Wenders, and Stories We Tell, by Sarah Polley.

What's been the most difficult thing you've faced recently in your creative process?
The weather in Brussels. It’s very harsh at this time of year, and there are very few hours of light.

What is your favorite restaurant and what do you recommend we order?
Fonda Mariquita, at the Santa Tere Market in Guadalajara. The fried quesadillas with chicharrón and flor de calabaza are a must.

If your life were a movie this month, what would it be called and who would write the soundtrack?
On this side. The soundtrack would be by Arvo Pärt.

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 really enjoy @j_esquirlas photography for how it captures fleeting moments and the atmospheres he creates using only light. I also admire Carla Simón’s films for their ability to make us feel familiar with what is sometimes foreign to us.