During those years, the desert also began to call to me, and in parallel, I returned to the analog darkroom using a technique called carbon printing, which works with pigment and, in its early days, was made with the soot from burned wood, hence the name. I wanted to photograph the desert, but that landscape asserts itself in such a way that it was almost impossible to do so without falling into the cliché of the tourist postcard. It was the desert itself that led me to carbon printing, and instead of taking a photo, the sand became the pigment in the darkroom. That is where "El nombre que (des)olvidamos" was born, a project I have been working on since 2022.

What did you learn (or unlearn) while working on them?
Many questions arose: To what extent have we contributed to the language of photography? Should photography adhere to a program of representation simply because it is an optical tool? What are the limits of mimesis, reality, and truth?

I learned that, in order to expand its language, it was sometimes necessary to set aside optics—and even then, it remained photography in its most classical sense.

What words, ideas or emotions were going through your head?
As I continued making photographs from a less orthodox approach, the desert stopped being only a specific territory with certain climatic conditions and became a form of exposure, a state to which we are all subjected. The desert of the real, as said by Jean Baudrillard.

Were there any conversations, movies, music, or books that made their way into that work?
Yes, definitely. A fragment from El huésped, Guadalupe Nettel’s novel, helped many loose ideas fall into place:

“For a long time I lived convinced that the desert contained the ashes that humans had produced throughout all ages: mostly those of human bodies, but also those of fires, the ruins of all bombardments, burned trash, the bones of whales. It had all accumulated there, in those silent dunes, across thousands of kilometers stretching without a single trace of life.”

What's been the most difficult thing you've faced recently in your creative process?
Working with soils and sands has been an alchemical challenge. It has meant not only returning to the rhythms of the analog darkroom but also researching the materials and exploring where the most primordial matter can effectively merge with imagination to become language.

What is your favorite restaurant and what do you recommend we order?
Entrevero, in downtown Coyoacán. Everything is delicious, but I recommend the beef and humita empanadas, paired with a glass of Tannat.

If your life were a movie this month, what would it be called and who would write the soundtrack?
Arrival. Scored by Cocteau Twins.

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.
Masao Yamamoto, a Japanese artist. I consider him a poet who transcends photography. He works with very little and achieves so much. His exhibitions become sanctuaries, spaces for spiritual reconnection.

Marta María Pérez Bravo, a Cuban artist living in Mexico. I would describe her work as embodying a timeless religious syncretism. She works with her body, ashes, candles, and other objects. When I see her images, I think of photography as a symbol of a feminine nature: a light that does not erase the world’s creative darkness.

Aglae Cortés Zazueta

Guaymas, 1977, photographer and independent educator. I like to ask many questions of photography. Member of the National System of Art Creators since 2021.

www.instagram.com/aglaecorteszazueta/

La entrada (Des)olvido se publicó primero en ERRR MAGAZINE.