In the end, we begin again

What pieces or projects have you been working on lately?
On my most personal work, which I began almost five years ago: intervened analog photography. What moves me is trying to decode my emotions, capture them in photographs, and work on them directly. Destroy in order to build; to resignify the photos I once took with a certain intention, now blurred by time.

Making interventions is something like putting a period at the end of things. Just as a period generates meaning for the word that precedes it, this is an exercise in letting go, understanding, and laying out — literally — what was: what I felt about what happened. So that it doesn’t remain only in my heart or in my head. Some photos or drawings are exactly what I feel, but heightened with lines from poems, songs, or repetitive thoughts, plus everything beautiful and wondrous that photography itself represents.

I went back to taking digital photos after a long pause; I rediscovered a love for storing certain days in pixels. Right now I’m working on fiction — table work — and on a documentary project I never would have imagined making, but that is blowing my mind. I always appreciate being able to see things from other perspectives, talking and sharing with people very different from me so I can keep expanding my worldview.

What did you learn (or unlearn) while working on them?
I think one of the things these interventions have given me most is learning to process my feelings: to observe them, feel them, and not judge them. Also, by sharing them, I realize I’m not so alone in this world, even though sometimes it feels that way. I allow myself to be very transparent about what I feel, and I find it beautiful that something so intimate can reach some people. When a stranger or a friend sees themselves, even a little, reflected, it brings me a lot of peace.

I feel that putting into words or images what might have hurt or shaken someone one day is a way of processing our own pain. That’s what happened to me with many works.

What words, ideas or emotions were going through your head?
Every little photo and intervention I’ve made has its own particular story, its own emotion and life within me before becoming what it ends up being. For example, the cinematic postcard I intervened with “The water of sorrow isn’t enough for me”, was quite a journey. A stranger I spoke with on the street gave it to me while we were making a film in downtown Guadalajara in 2024. He handed me a handful of movie postcards and told me his life story.

Postcard 607 I gave to someone who shook my entire life. I met him and he made me rethink absolutely everything. I learned from his gaze, deeply enjoyed his company, and we shared several beautiful sunsets. Later, we left each other with many questions reconsidered and our hearts in our hands. On the back there’s a little love letter, and the red interventions were done by him. That postcard traveled from who-knows-where to Mexico City, then to La Paz and back to Guadalajara. It passed through several hands, many feelings, and many ideas. That image represents my story, that person, my little broken heart, and who knows what other stories it carries with it.

Some others are family photos I reinterpreted over the years. Some are screams, others whispers. Each one has its own life, its own development, and its own feeling behind it.

Were there any conversations, movies, music, or books that made their way into that work?
In my art, everything influences me. Cinema has always been my window, my mirror, and the path; it has taken me to so many places and always shakes me and inspires me in countless ways I still don’t fully understand. A little of who I am comes from — and because of — cinema; from there all the other arts stem. They’re a little flame.

What's been the most difficult thing you've faced recently in your creative process?
Being able to live from it. Trying to monetize and assign a monetary value to something that came from the deepest part of my being causes me a lot of conflict. We live in capitalism and I have to pay rent, eat, and making photography costs money.

But I also like that people can have something that resonates with them, and I hate that art is only for a certain segment of the population and excludes those who can’t afford the luxury of owning a piece because it’s either that or feeding their family. I’d like to reach an optimal balance where I can keep doing this, even as material costs keep getting higher.

If your life were a movie this month, what would it be called and who would write the soundtrack?
In the end, we begin again. Soundtrack by Lázaro Cristóbal Comala.

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.
Eduardo Luis is an explosion of creativity and talent in the disciplines he works in. He’s my favorite Mexican screenwriter: he writes with such beautiful ease and naturalness that you forget there’s someone behind the story you just read. I learned to love poetry thanks to him, and I’ll always be grateful for how he brought me closer to words. His photographs are gorgeous; I really like seeing the world through his eyes and that he shares the details he finds important. There’s a very soft intimacy and naturalness, and I love that he never stops exploring tools. Plus, he makes the most delicious little breads in all of Durango.

Claudia Becerril has been one of my favorite cinematographers for a couple of years. She has a great eye: movements, framing, details. She makes magic with the natural, which makes the set freer and allows actors to flow. Visually she manages to make all departments appear in harmony so that, through sheer synergy, you forget which hands touched what you’re seeing. That reveals a lot of empathy and a deep understanding of others. Her images feel generous, and all the technical aspects blow my mind.

Van is a multidisciplinary artist. One of those people who perspire talent and creativity. Check him out.