A photographer’s journey.

For photographers, the personal project is the single, most formidable way we can push our limits and refine our artistic vision. Personal projects come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes ideas are executed in a matter of weeks or months, while others take years to reach fruition. But while every photographic exploration follows a unique path, there are certain basic questions we can ask ourselves in order to create structure and definition for any personally driven work. Among these: Which ideas and concepts will make for a meaningful artistic journey? How do we determine realistic parameters for our photographic ideas? Where can we secure the resources we will need to see them through? What are proven strategies for developing and managing an ongoing body of work? When is a body of work complete and ready for presentation? What is the right venue for sharing our work publicly?

These are some of the questions we will explore as we focus on your work in my upcoming online class via PhotoPhlo “The Personal Project: From Concept to Final Presentation”.

The class is a weekend intensive and is meant for Intermediate and Advanced students. However, if you are already at work on your first project and need guidance, feel free to register for the class as well.

Here

“Papi, sit with me”

“Right here, Luca?”

“Yes, it’s pretty”

Time travel

I never imagined sprinting on my bike would land me all the way back to the 15th Century Joseon Dynasty era!

Owning our ideas

What exactly is a writing workshop for photographers? Why is it even necessary? Shouldn't photographers be communicating their ideas through images?

Writing about our photographs is not equivalent to explaining them away in words. This would be impossible. Writing, however, is an essential part of a photographer's practice, as it helps us to delineate the contours of a project and produce the texts necessary to get our work out into the world. Describing our work and creative process in words not only opens a door for our audience to more deeply understand our photographic intentions, it is a way to reach out to our communities in order to secure the resources we need to realize our creative vision. Most importantly, writing is a part of photographic authorship and owning not only our images, but also our ideas.

So join us for this workshop! It will be a small gathering of like-minded colleagues coming together to put words to their photographs; coffee percolating, sleeves rolled up, photos on the wall, keyboards at the ready.

More info here.

Why Photographers Write

Photographer friends,

I have joined the stellar Faculty at PhotoPhlo, a new online education platform. My class “Why Photographers Write” is now open for enrollment.

About the class:

In this four-session course we will focus on the intersection of writing and photography as it applies to exploring and defining our core identity as image-makers. Photographers enter and position themselves in the marketplace based on their particular visual sensibility. But many professional opportunities and commissions hinge on crafting a compelling written proposal. Moreover, writing is a key element of owning our ideas, presenting our finalized projects to the public and raising funds for future endeavors.

Through writing exercises and group dynamics, this class will help participants develop clear, articulate and powerful versions of the essential texts they need to advance their photographic practice: artist statement, project description, editorial / advertising pitch, and biographical narrative.

More information and sign-up via PhotoPhlo:

https://www.photophlo.com/why-photographers-write

Punchline

Sometimes the boys like to set up their own jokes. Olin lay on his back and folded up his arms and legs, pushing out his belly. “Mami, ask me if I’m dead”. “Olin, are you dead?” “No, I’m just an animal enjoying the sun”.

A day late.

Cold day.

Little hands.

Big pockets.

Found my Valentine a day late. But so it is always: love appears when it will. This one is meant for all the fathers and sons out there.

The Rookie

As a rookie cyclist, I’m finding out that this is a very technical sport in just about every respect. Take the clothing for example: it feels engineered more than designed. And when you first start riding you’re bound to feel self-conscious, if not down right mortified by what you’re wearing. But after a while you realize nothing else will do. And of course the kit changes with the seasons and even small fluctuations in the weather mean you gotta make adjustments to compensate. It’s an endless balancing game.

Bike accessories come in all shapes and sizes and every time I turn around my buddies are debating the merits of one or another of their latest acquisitions - or talking about their wish list with wistful expressions.

Bikes come in all prices. Some of them are more expensive than cars; others are the price of a sushi dinner for two in Manhattan.

Choosing the right bike matters the most because it will truly be an extension of your self and the companion of many adventures. Aligning and fitting it to your body is like tuning a musical instrument. Your bike will require your meticulous care and attention to perform flawlessly. 

But of course none of this - not the bike, not the clothing, nor the accessories - is the true engine of your progress; it’s the heart that drives you. It’s the desire to be out in the world and to find out something about yourself in the process. And even pain, when it comes, becomes a motor. If you can accept it - and get to the other side of it -  pain will teach you valuable lessons and make you a stronger rider.

Salir

Cada salida es una interrogante. La respuesta es siempre la misma, pero nunca se repite. La respuesta eres tú.

Every ride is a question mark. The answer is always the same but it never repeats itself. The answer is you.

Blanco

Ice cracking under my wheels and a blanket of fresh snow draping over the beautiful river. When the season is over, maybe I’ll miss winter riding a bit after all.

Broken wing

These deep winter days, you can count other riders on the fingers of one hand. An old man is ahead of me and I’m coming up on him fast.

I glance over my shoulder preparing to overtake him but at the last moment instinct tells me to slow down instead; his bike wobbles and then he looses balance, tumbling to the ground and breaking his fall with both hands and right shoulder.

I hustle off my bike and hurry over to help him up. He is shocked and disoriented. I sit him by the curb, get his bike off the road and ask if he’s oK. He nods his head. Does he have a cell phone? He doesn’t. I offer to call an ambulance. He thinks for a moment and I take a better look at him: rail thin, in his early or mid 80’s, a heavy winter jacket weighed down by a chain he’s slung over his shoulder. Even though the air is frigid, his white head is uncovered. No gloves on his calloused hands.

In the end, he thanks me but declines further help. I get back on my bike and leave him sitting on the curb, eyes cast down, head lowered, motionless, like a bird with a broken wing.

The sun also rises

Sometime on the morning of Dec 31st we decided we wanted to welcome the New Year by the sea. So we made a couple calls, packed up a few things, filled the gas tank and drove out to YangYang beach on the East Coast of Korea.

This is the sun rising for the first time in 2022.

Another year with HRM - my angel - and two little rascals who make Dennis the Menace come off like a rank amateur of mischief.

Sub-zero

There’s always a first for everything, including riding a bike in sub-zero weather (-10C was the low today). It was eerily quiet by the margins of frozen rivers and all the vegetation had turned brown and brittle. At times it seemed like I was the only rider on the road.

But what I’ll never forget was reaching for a sip of water and closing my glove around a solid bidon, no water rushing to my lips, only the dry cracking of ice. Or the warming effect of Latin beats from my headset letting me drift to another, warmer land, where my skin didn’t feel the sting of winter.

Celebrity

Over the years, just by virtue of being a New Yorker, I randomly crossed paths or had small interactions with celebrities. Other times, fewer, I photographed them on assignment for publications.

Freshly arrived in the city, my first such encounter was with Matt Dillon. Mid-afternoon on a weekday, I was sitting at the counter in an Upper West Side bar nursing a drink. I looked up at the mirror, hung above and behind the bartender, and realized Dillon had taken the stool next to mine. Not knowing any better, and thus breaking a cardinal rule of living in NYC, I was brazen enough to say hello. Dillon was friendly and gracious about it all. We talked for some ten minutes about Rusty James and then about Antigua Guatemala and Atitlan.

Another time, I was one of three people waiting in line to see an obscure Roberto Rossellini film at the Lincoln Center Film Society. His daughter Isabella was one of the other two, standing just ahead of me, gorgeous in the chiaroscuro of the low-lit lounge. And so on: Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, then years later - post TomKat - Katie and another male actor who bore more than a passing resemblance to Cruise. I remember fleeting moments with Martin Sheen, Harvey Keitel, Kirsten Dunst, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, F. Murray Abraham, Blythe Danner, Angelina Jolie, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Donald Trump and Marla Maples, Lawrence Fishburne, Christian Slater, John Lurie, Marc Anthony, Jack Nicholson, Woody Allen, Michael J. Fox, Debbie Harry, Mick Jagger, Robin Williams, Kurt Vonnegut, Paul Auster and others. Sometimes there’s a photo to mark the occasion, more often just a passing thought.

But my favorite and funniest encounter happened in a small Park Slope coffee shop, where I was sitting by the window sipping a coffee and watching the world go by. Every so often, somebody walking outside would stop mid-stride, do a double take, and keep on going. After this happened three or four times I was so bewildered I looked over my shoulder at the guy sitting next to me, ready to comment on the strange behavior. I didn’t need to make a comment; John Turturro, was quietly sitting there, also sipping a coffee and watching the world go by.

Bibliophiles

Growing up in Guatemala, my favorite room of the house was my father’s library. The books I read over the years are as much a part of my self as the blood and bones and living tissue in my body.

This year, HRM chose a collection of eighty illustrated books about nature as Luca and Olin’s Hanukkah gift. Their appetite for reading can only be described as voracious. And even when we are not reading to them, they often open the books and discuss them with one another.

Gracias mami, you are the light of Hanukkah for our family.

Happy Holidays!

Beyond this door

Beyond this door are three mountains. The first two are tough but manageable climbs. The third one though - Homyeong Mountain - is a straight up thirty minute ascent. Today there was ice on the road, snow on the ground and when we finally got to the downhill a minus ten wind chill that leaves a Guatemalan guy doubting his own sanity.

But what a great day it was: testing the limits of my endurance and remembering that a body has dreams and ambitions of its own, every bit as worthy as those of the mind and spirit.

“The Street Becomes” at MoMA, NYC

Early days in the making of a monograph for “The Street Becomes”, I had an opportunity to publish it with Smithsonian Press. It seemed very fitting, since this body of work stemmed from my Artist Fellowship at the Smithsonian Institution. 

However, in essence, SP wanted a coffee table book, annotated with academic references. I envisioned an artist book, which reflected my aesthetic intervention and repurposing of source materials and which obeyed a personal criterion outside the purview of academic research.

So we parted ways. 

Seven years later and a few evolutions forward from my initial book dummy, “The Street Becomes” was published by Meteoro Editions in Amsterdam. 

Sometimes a good book hides a better book - and this publication was well worth the wait.

I am very pleased to announce that the first institution to acquire the book for its collection is the Museum of Modern Art in NYC.

Artist Talk and Book Signing in Seoul, Korea

Next Saturday 11/13 at 6PM, I will be giving an Artist Talk and signing copies of my new monograph “The Street Becomes” at Same Dust, my favorite photo bookstore in Seoul.

Welcome to THREE

I remember when all they could do was lie on their backs, swaddled and cozy in their cribs, looking up at their mobiles turning musical circles above them.

These days, they speak in code:

“Drop the needle” means: Papi play Thunderstruck by AC/DC.

They are very specific about their favorite things. Olin likes a white Tesla, Luca fancies a red Porsche convertible. They prefer their seafood boiled rather than fried or baked.

They can be pretty subtle about getting the things they want: Luca inspects our recycling bin at home, casually picks up an ice cream wrapper and asks: who ate this?

They keep very high standards: Olin sits with me for half an hour correcting my accent as I read him books in Korean. Whenever I ask him if I got it right, he lowers his eyes and says quietly: try again, one more time.

When I get back from riding - elated, sweaty and mud spattered - they give me sly, sidelong glances and shy smiles that say: Papi you were out having fun without us again?

Don’t worry boys, we will ride together someday! And that’s a promise.

Meantime, welcome to THREE Luca and Olin.

May it be our best year yet!

They are not boxes

“Olin, did you see that flatbed truck full of boxes?”

“They are not boxes, Papi. They are crates”.