mood, memory, or myth

“The room is dark, but our eyes gradually adjust to the darkness.” After Dark -Haruki Murakami


My ongoing series Mood, Memory, or Myth is an exploration of the human experiences and memories of fear, anxiety, and pleasure, and the impact of growing up in a family that refuses to discuss any of that. Sex, sadness, death, and family illnesses are subjects that my family considers taboo. My family’s inability to discuss these subjects openly left me without a voice. I found that depicting these forbidden subjects empowers me, allowing me to explore my feminine desires, my sadnesses, and to come to terms with the expectations my family and my Mexican culture imposed on me as a female: to wed and have children. I create illusions that conjure the realms of the imagination without presenting a factual reality. Something very personal and complex, but which allows viewers to relate freely on their own terms. I use these subjects and memories to help me navigate the anxieties caused by my family’s expectations of me as a woman, and to fill the space left by my family’s silence on these taboos.


I work traditionally, shooting film, Polaroids, paper negatives, and making darkroom chromogenic prints, occasionally incorporating mixed media. Analog production allows me to insert more of myself into each print.





fictitious family

I was the youngest sibling and only daughter in a household of Mexican immigrants. The dissonance between my desires and my culture’s expectations made me anxious. My father’s diagnosis of early on-set Alzheimers, and my family’s inability to have an open discussion about his condition, only made things worse. I turned to photography to express these inner inquietudes, impressionistically exploring events and anxieties. 

let it go

Growing up as a Catholic Latina, I was very aware of well defined female roles. At the time, I did not dare to question them out loud. I adhered to them innocently. I find myself photographing women to liberate myself from my ghosts’ past. I explore femininity collaboratively, photographing close friends and acquaintances. We come together. There is a relationship built on trust. At times, it comes from unspoken words, a synergy between the two. There is a femininity-full, frank, and free. Throughout my work, I use moody narratives that evoke life’s dark nuances of fear, anxiety, and pleasure, freed from worries about “gendered gaze”, just a photographer, trust, and time well spent among friends.  

en un instante

En un instante is a junction between two nerve cells where a gap between an impulse and my sx70 attempt to make sense of   my cinematic dreams. It is a world that may conflict with reality and life. Feelings, thoughts, and symbols, appear and I use them to make sense of the world that I dreamt about.

red is the color of…


I started with a single red dot then a smear and then the redness just continued from that point on…

between the sun and the moon...


With the closing of the community darkroom in San Francisco what came next?  The inbetween and continuation of what’s next hung in the air. My color printing darkroom rituals came to a hault for the time being, but I continue to shoot film. 


On numerous occassions, I have tried to give up shooting film, and delve back into digital realm, but those digital files would either just sit in my camera,  or on a hard drive.  I was never truly satisfied with them, so what to do? Do I attempt to give it up again? Have it drive me mad, depressed, or both? In the meantime, instead of having my thoughts control me and bog me down, I have just continued to shoot my film cameras and have the lab digitally scan my film. These shots are the inbetween - the sun and the moon - my daily encounters, inspirations, my interests of light, and shadow,  fleeting moments that make me pull the trigger. They make me feel alive - life happening  “as is.”  The stuff at first view that seems senseless, but somehow fits with the way I see the world. My thoughts wax and wane in the background, and I pull the trigger of a visual synapse.

press

red is the color of…


I started with a single red dot then a smear and then the redness just continued from that point on…

between the sun and the moon...


With the closing of the community darkroom in San Francisco what came next?  The inbetween and continuation of what’s next hung in the air. My color printing darkroom rituals came to a hault for the time being, but I continue to shoot film. 


On numerous occassions, I have tried to give up shooting film, and delve back into digital realm, but those digital files would either just sit in my camera,  or on a hard drive.  I was never truly satisfied with them, so what to do? Do I attempt to give it up again? Have it drive me mad, depressed, or both? In the meantime, instead of having my thoughts control me and bog me down, I have just continued to shoot my film cameras and have the lab digitally scan my film. These shots are the inbetween - the sun and the moon - my daily encounters, inspirations, my interests of light, and shadow,  fleeting moments that make me pull the trigger. They make me feel alive - life happening  “as is.”  The stuff at first view that seems senseless, but somehow fits with the way I see the world. My thoughts wax and wane in the background, and I pull the trigger of a visual synapse.