Mexico Notebook: Interview with Adam Wiseman

Annuska Angulo in the bathroom of Progreso and Prosperidad, Escandon, Mexico City,
From the series "Moving Portraits" (2013) © Adam Wiseman 

Hannah Frieser, Jaime Permuth and I are collaborating to explore contemporary photography in Mexico. We're looking at trends and how they relate to traditions; events, institutions and venues; as well as pursuing conversations with curators, academics, gallerists and photographers on what's happening currently. This collaborative project will feature a variety of types of posts including interviews, book reviews, published letters, portfolios of images and more.

Hannah Frieser is a curator, photographer and book artist and former Executive Director of Light Work. Jaime Permuth is a Guatemalan photographer living and working in New York City and a Faculty Member at the School of Visual Arts.

Today we continue this series with an interview of Adam Wiseman by Jessica Hubbard Marr.

Other posts in this series include:
Q&A with Luis Mercado
Q&A with Ray Govea
Interview with Ramón Jiménez Cuén
Interview with Laurence Salzmann
Interview with Diego Berruecos
Interview with Mariela Sancari
Q&A with Eduardo Jiménez Román
Q&A with Claudia Arechiga
Q&A with Nahatan Navarro
Contemporary Photography in Oaxaca
Q&A with Aglae Cortés
Q&A with Maria José Sesma
Interview with César Rodríguez
Q&A with Nora Gómez
Q&A with Melba Arellano
Q&A with Jorge Taboada

______________________________

Rafael Ortega, on his balcony in Progreso and Prosperidad, Escandon, Mexico City, From the series
"Moving Portraits" (2013) © Adam Wiseman

Jessica Hubbard Marr: To begin, where do you live and what do you do?

Adam Wiseman:  I live in Mexico City; I am an artist and a freelance editorial photographer.

JHM: Describe your first experience with photography. What stands out to you most about this first encounter?

AW:  My parents have always been obsessed with photo albums, we have many volumes of them. As a child we moved and traveled a lot. My mother is Scottish, my father American. I was born in Mexico and as a child lived in Brazil, Mexico, Scotland and London.

With so much moving around, the photo albums were the only way I could keep everything straight. I developed an appreciation for visual language from a very young age. I struggled with dyslexia, pictures made much more sense as a means of communication than words.

As a young adolescent I began to travel alone or with friends and recorded my travels with a point-and-shoot; I loved it, wasn't much good, but I was always excited to get the film developed.  It wasn't until I started going to university that I became more serious about photography as a tool of personal expression and not one of just documentation.  It was at the age of 18 that I learned how to use a manual SLR, how to develop film in a darkroom, how to print and how to edit.

Elena Poniatowska in her garden in Chimalistac, Mexico City, From the series "Moving Portraits" (2013)
© Adam Wiseman

JHM: What were you drawn to most about photography?

AW:  I am drawn to its intuitive nature, I feel most of my good work is shot intuitively, to a certain extent; subconsciously, not intellectually.

There is simplicity and clarity in photography but also plenty of room for interpretation. I am drawn to photographs that are in some way unresolved, that have some ambiguity about them requiring the viewer to participate and fill in the blanks with their imagination.

I love the subjective nature of photography, how it distorts reality and manifests a particular point of view and yet it is often accepted as the gospel truth. I am fascinated by the idea of taking a photograph and thus removing a slice of reality from a larger context and changing its meaning by creating a new context either by placing it next to other photographs, or on its own, but without the reference of its natural environment.

Francis Alÿs in La Condesa, Mexico City, From the series "Moving Portraits" (2013)
© Adam Wiseman

JHM: What was your experience like studying at ICP (International Center for Photography)? What stands out to you about that education?

AW:  ICP was my first serious introduction to photography.  We were only 11 [students], so each of us had plenty of time to share our work and critique the work of our peers. We had access to darkrooms, cameras, lights and chemicals.

Experimentation was always encouraged: it felt liberating to be able to shoot so freely and to be in such a creative environment.  What stood out was the dynamic back and forth from one’s peers. I miss it today, having so many talented photographers around to receive feedback from and being able to look at other's work.

Guillermo Santamarina at the Muca Roma, Mexico City, From the series "Moving Portraits" (2013)
© Adam Wiseman

JHM: How did your work at Magnum impact you or inspire you?

AW:  My work at Magnum was as a printer. It was a wonderful opportunity to see how the photographers I had always admired worked. Looking at the contact sheets of each photographer would reveal how they achieved the iconic images which were eventually chosen, the images we all eventually knew so well which became part of the fabric of history: Bresson, Capa, Gilden, Koudelka, Erwitt, Meiselas, Peress, Webb, McCurry, Nachtwey… no longer just role models, they became my teachers. I was very fortunate to be there and most of them were very generous with their time.

JHM: Who has been a photographer, whether at Magnum or elsewhere, that notably influenced you and/or your current professional practice?

AW:  I have always admired photographers who have broken with tradition, photographers who discover a new way to express themselves and don't necessarily adhere to the unspoken rules of the medium. Martin Parr, Stephen Shore, Alec Soth, Bruce Gilden, Richard Mosse, Paul Graham, Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin are a few that come to mind.

Luis Mdahuar in Kurt and Rocio's garage, La Condesa, Mexico City, From the series "Moving Portraits" (2013)
© Adam Wiseman

JHM: What brought you back to Mexico City? How was the transition from the New York photography world? Challenges? Benefits? Differences?

AW:  I returned to Mexico City for practical and emotional reasons. A part of me always wanted to return and I was often nostalgic for when I lived there. My wife and I had also just had our first child and we were struggling to make a living as we slowly got our careers off the ground. Moving to Mexico turned out to be a good decision for many reasons, among them for my development as a photographer.

I was offered opportunities I feel would not have been offered to me in New York. I became the photo editor of a travel magazine, an experience that let me grow and experiment, develop a personal style and refine my technical skills. Being a photo editor in a big publishing house turned out to be too much of an administrative job for me and I soon left to become a freelancer. Despite it not being a good fit as a long-term decision, the experience was a very valuable one and gave me the skills I needed to then find my own path in the photographic and art world.

Melanie Smith in her studio, San Pedro Los Pinos, Mexico City, From the series "Moving Portraits" (2013)
© Adam Wiseman

JHM: How do you find a balance between editorial and personal work? Where do find inspiration for your personal work?

AW:  For most of my career, I have survived from editorial assignments. From very early on, I made a commitment to myself that every assignment should have a personal angle to it. I was not allowed to be happy with the work if only my client was. I could only be happy with it if I had discovered and photographed something that challenged me intellectually or aesthetically.

As a consequence, my editorial work developed into something more personal and my personal work began to take center stage. I never really felt I have had to balance the two, on the contrary they are each a part of the other's process.

Michael Nyman in La Colonia Roma, Mexico City, From the series "Moving Portraits" (2013)
© Adam Wiseman

JHM: What was the motivation behind your series, "Moving Portraits"?

AW:  "Moving Portraits" was part of a personal exploration looking to challenge the traditional rules of documentary photography and in this case, documentary portraiture.

It came at a time when I decided to step back from my semi-formulaic editorial process and think about photography in a more theoretical way: what is a portrait? What is the role of the photographer/subject? What is their relationship to each other? How is objectivity achieved with a medium that has such a subjective nature?

In a way, it was a personal rebellion to my years of being faithful to the unspoken yet strict rules of documentary photography. "Moving Portraits" was inspired by the need to break the rules. My goal was to capture the essence of my subjects through untraditional methods, in this case through deceit and by using a new tool for me; video.

Boca del Rio Bar, From the series "d.f.p.m." (2011) © Adam Wiseman

Mannequins, From the series "d.f.p.m." (2011) © Adam Wiseman

JHM: Deceit! I imagine being captured in such a novel approach was new for all your subjects, and especially the public figures who have their portrait taken regularly. What was the feedback from your subjects? Anything unexpected?

AW:  Initially, they were surprised and at first quiet, probably because they were trying to remember if they did anything foolish. After the surprise wore off though they found it amusing and I think liked the sneaky/cheekiness of it.

JHM: In 2013, "Moving Portraits" was featured in the exhibition "México a través de la Fotografía" at the MUNAL (National Museum of Art); it was the final work in the survey of 300 important works of Mexican photographic history. How did it feel to be included alongside such legendary work? Do you see the series as an indicator to where photography is evolving in Mexico?

AW:  I was flattered. I was also impressed by Georgina Rodriguez's bold decision to include "MP" - a video - in a show that illustrated the history of Mexico, but also the history of photography in Mexico. It was bold but necessary because technology is allowing for changes in traditional methods of expression and many photographers now incorporate video into their work.

Many of the pieces in this year's Photography Biennial include video. These videos are mostly photographic in the way that they use the language of still photography (carefully composed, camera in a fixed position, limited or restricted movement within the frame, and the lack of a story based narrative).

Many contemporary Mexican photographers are expressing themselves through video in this new way; Pavka Segura's new work, which might be described as video photographs, is a good example of this. Nahatan Navarro incorporates into his work "stolen" video selfies taken from electronic store laptops.

So yes, I feel that "Moving Portraits" is one example of how photography in Mexico is freeing itself from the medium and its rules, new techniques encouraged by advances in technology and changes in the market has made documentary photography more subjective and concept driven and less driven by the pursuit of a story-based narrative.

Three Kings Day, From the series "d.f.p.m." (2011) © Adam Wiseman

JHM: What was the inspiration for your most recent work, "Tlatelolco Desmentido"? How did you decide to represent/depict the current community at Tlatelolco?

AW:  "Tlatelolco Desmentido" ("Tlatelolco Disproved") is a look at the relationship between a building and the people who live in it. How one shapes and defines the other in spite of what the architect had originally intended. I was interested in Tlatelolco because it has been so scarred by history and is so far removed from the modernist utopia it was supposed to be.

I wanted to make a "portrait" of a place and a people in a moment in time. A portrait where the process not only allowed for an unpredictable result, mirroring the architect Mario Pani's experience, but that also involved the residents in the making, without the residents being the protagonists. The building is always the protagonist in this process, yet the building is defined by those who live in it.

Portrait of a Man Drinking Beer, From the series "d.f.p.m." (2011) © Adam Wiseman

JHM: What were some of the challenges in dealing with such a tragic historical event?

AW:  At first I had to decide how to approach the subject, how much of this project should be about the tragic events that occurred there?

From the very beginning, I chose not to make the student massacre of '68 the focus of this project. It had to be as present as it was in the minds and lives of those who lived there: not the main focus, just like it isn't constantly a part of everyday life. However, there is no denying that its ghost is there and will never go away.

Once I had decided to focus on the building and its residents, the challenge was primarily logistical and social: how to convince over 100 people to get involved in this crazy project?

To do this, I asked my good friend, artist and producer Enrique Cervera to help me. He was key to getting the Chihuahua building to open their doors to us and to keep them open for almost a year now.

From the series "Tlatelolco Desmentido" (2014) © Adam Wiseman

JHM: Were there any surprises in the process of making the work?

AW:  Absolutely! The biggest surprise was how eager and willing the residents were; over 90% of those asked took part in the project. The results of "Tlatelolco Desmentido" are far removed from what I expected would occur.

The whole project was a surprise. Another surprise was how the project evolved naturally, how it began and then where it led me, particularly from shooting the façade and the orchestrated lights to shooting the interior windows.

From the series "Tlatelolco Desmentido" (2014) © Adam Wiseman

From the series "Tlatelolco Desmentido" (2014) © Adam Wiseman

JHM: How are you inspired by Mexico City? What is unique about it, especially for a photographer?

AW:  Like any big city, its unpredictability. In the case of Mexico City, I think this is especially the case. I also love the way it solves its own problems through unconventional creative means.

I once read a description of São Paulo, Brazil as a city that looked as if New York had vomited Los Angeles… I think there is some of that in Mexico, not only the imagery, but also socio-politically, culturally and economically speaking.

JHM: Finally, what’s next?

AW:  Still lifes… I think.

From the series "Tlatelolco Desmentido" (2014) © Adam Wiseman

______________________________

Jessica Hubbard Marr is a specialist in photographic imagery with a focus on Latin America, an interest that developed thanks to many nights in the Manuel Alvarez Bravo/IAGO library in Oaxaca over the years. As a result, she subsequently received her M.A. in The History and Theory of Photography at Sotheby's Institute of Art/University of Manchester in London in 2011; Marr previously earned her B.A. in English from Kenyon College in 2005. Prior to working in the photography field, Marr worked with the non-profit, 'Friends of Oaxacan Folk Art' from 2008-2010, as both a photographer and cultural liaison. 

Since 2010, she has worked for TransGlobe Publishing in London, researching and writing about contemporary art and photography in locations ranging from Brazil to the Middle East. In 2012, Marr was appointed to the Global Nominations Panel for the Prix Pictect Photography Prize as a specialist in Latin American Photography. Her original essay, "A Glimpse into Enduring Moments" was featured in the catalogue of photographer Nadja Massun's solo exhibition, Alice in the Land of Zapata, at the Hungarian House of Photography in Budapest in 2012.

Marr resides in the US after spending the past six years studying and working abroad in Oaxaca, Quito, London and Mexico City. She credits these experiences to both expanding and deepening her appreciation for and knowledge about the photographic medium across cultures. 

She works as an independent photography consultant, researcher, writer, editor, and art advisor for both art/photography professionals and practitioners between Mexico, New York and London. 

Marr's photographic work has been published internationally in a variety of art and literary journals. Her first published photograph was taken in Oaxaca in 2008. 

127: Keith Dannemiller

Keith Dannemiller 
City Bus, from the series "Urban Ecology"
9/14/2012 

Urban Ecology
As a young boy growing up in Akron, Ohio, I lived in a pink house beside a forest. “The Woods”, as it was known to me and my friends, was, for us, vast and mysterious. Its tall trees, open fields and muddy bogs were there for us for the discovery. During those years we roamed where we wanted, but we never found where the forest ended.

In those innocent days, to look around an oak tree -- for the pleasure and experience of finding what was on the other side -- was just a game. But today, when I look back, I realize it was also instructive and formative.

That experience gave me a model for my photographic searches when I was a young man and was living in San Francisco. There I looked -- literally and figuratively -- to discover who or what was, not around the next tree, but rather around the next corner. Crowded streets replaced forest paths, but the conclusion was the same: to wander the streets, like playing in the woods, would give me the opportunity for discovery. A camera could sometimes be, a ticket to worlds different from mine and always a way to record where I had gone and preserve what I had seen.

Today, here in the Historic Center of Mexico City, that exploration continues, motivated by an unfulfilled curiosity and a blind trust. I trust that the city will always tell me its story. One just has to be open to its light, its odors, its sounds, its movements. I don’t go to the Centro with a preconceived notion of what I want to photograph. Rather, I let the streets divulge what they will. The difference resides in the ability to see urban scenes not as static sets, but as something in process that begins and ends every day. I try to be a witness as to how people relate among themselves, and more importantly, how they relate to each other given their immediate environment: the streets, the buildings and the public spaces.

Although it is ‘historic’, the Centro is a modern and truly dynamic space. As Jane Jacobs, the noted urbanologist has stated: “ A city ecosystem is composed of physical-economic-ethical processes active at a given time within a city and its close dependencies.” Being a photographer of this ecosystem with unique characteristics, those urban ‘processes’ give a basis and a reason to my search. To be able to express them photographically, accords a rich narrative that encompasses, in the best of cases, past, present and future. And in place of one simple representation -- as if the image were a mathematical equation -- or one simple truth, hundreds of interpretations are possible.

Those adventures of long ago, that I thought were just kid’s games, are still part of the same, continuing process: a personal chronicle that rescues me from the immensity of this city without limits that surrounds me.

- Keith Dannemiller
17 October 2012
México, DF

Interview: Mark Powell

Interviewed from his home in Mexico City
March 3rd, 2011

Photographer Mark Powell, originally from Detroit, has been based in Mexico City the past eight years and will soon become a Mexican citizen. He has shown his images internationally, including at the Brooklyn Institute of Contemporary Art and the New Museum in New York City, the Museo Eco and the Museo Archivo de la Fotografía in Mexico City, as well as in São Paolo, Madrid, Basel, Moscow and Amersterdam. In 2006 he published a book of his photography called Very Important Person and his work was included in the recently published Street Photography Now.

Two other interviews excellently cover Mark’s background and past bodies of work: a 2006 interview on 2point8 and a 2009 interview by Ben Roberts on insig.ht.

Mark’s personal site can be found here and his Flickrstream here.

This interview largely focuses on a previously unpublished project which consists of images he has curated from the website “Sexy o No?” On this site anyone can upload his or her photograph to have it voted on publicly for its sexiness, from 1 to 10. Posters can also add text to accompany their image and make his or herself available to be contacted.

Mark Powell: This whole body of work, I’m trying to understand it myself. I just know that I’m attracted to these pictures, directly as photographs, to begin with.

The reason that I started looking at these pictures is that a friend of mine wanted me to do a picture for them for their “Sexy o No?” page. I said what’s this “Sexy o No?” thing? “Hot or Not” I guess the equivalent would be. But in “Hot or Not” there’s a different kind of visual language, I think because of the different cultures involved.

I started the last couple of years collecting these and they’re gone now [from the site]. After a while they get lost in the site’s cache, you never see them again, or the users aren’t active anymore. So you’re saving some of these pictures. There’s an interesting energy to them because they’re very personal, some of them are self-portraits, some of them are being taken by their boyfriends or...mostly they’re looking for boyfriends, I think...or their mothers or their girl friends.

I was a little exhausted from photographing, and I felt inspired by these because they’re so natural.

But you’re also looking at all these girls online and you have this perverted kind of reaction to them, like, “Why am I looking at these?” [even though] there’s another way you’re looking at them.

They’re pretty amazing. There’s been a lot of people collecting vernacular photography, but these are from now, and there’s something about them, they’re so lowbrow, but really telling. They’re better photos than I could ever take in these situations. I think they’re quite inspirational sometimes.

fototazo: I was reading an interview in which you mention Enrique Metinides. I remember your comments about his work, about its lack of self-consciousness, printing photos at Costco, blind eye to the art world. I wonder if that kind of connects with this work as an interest in its...

MP: For sure. It makes me frustrated sometimes that you really can’t turn that off as a photographer. I really admire pure 100% photographers. They’re working for newspapers, or here in Mexico we have the rojos, these gráficos, the newspapers that cover violence, blood or just pure sex, the stuff that sells papers. They’re trying to get a good shot that sells papers.

Back in the day Metinides, they call him “The Kid” because he started when he was twelve-years-old, was really into movies. You can tell it just naturally rubbed off on him. He’d go into the cinema and then take it to real life, compose things from what he’d seen.

I get frustrated, I wish I could do that better. Sometimes my self-consciousness gets in my way and I have to step away a little bit. Maybe this [project] is a way for me to do that and to make my own work better in the future, be inspired by it in a way.

f: Are you working on other bodies of images at the same time?

MP: Yeah, well right now there’s an opportunity, I’ll be working with the History Channel and I’ll have my own TV show. It’s going to be where they follow you around like a reality [show], and I’ll be working in South America. I also work commissions and I just finished a documentary as a cinematographer about Mexican vedettes, showgirls.

Again, that sort of burns you out, and I really want to go back to a personal confrontation with the world, carrying a little camera around. I did a book called VIP in 2006 [in that way] and I’ve missed that.

Being in Mexico as a photographer [from outside the country], you have this whole layering system of visually seeing and reacting to it. At first you just fall in love with it, it’s all new and then it sort of settles within you and you have to find other material to react to. I think you get to where it becomes closer to the core, which is home.

And that’s where I’m at right now. I feel it’s my home, I feel comfortable here, it’s become status quo. I [am] no different from myself in Detroit in the way I react to things. That’s a nice place to be and I think that’s another reason I’m kind of digging through “Sexy o No?” You start seeing your understanding of [another] culture; [although] there’s still a lot of mystery left.

I was very aware not to be seduced by this immediate folkloric aspect of being in a different country [when I arrived]. I also was always being reminded of things from Detroit; I like to mix that up, like you don’t know if it’s Detroit or Mexico City.

f: What’s your interest in confusing that line? I think a lot of photographers want to define something specifically, to document, whether its “documentary” work or not.

MP: Well, yeah, I, really don’t like documentary photography, it really bothers me some times.

f: Is there something about it in particular that’s bothersome?

MP: I think that’s it just it’s too direct sometimes, it’s too “I’m going to document this” and it gets in the way of more mysterious narratives. I’ve done it, I’ve done a series of gringos living in Mexico, but I stopped. The best for me is to go to a place and imagine it and react to it and let the photos imagine something that’s not. I try just to react very intuitively, from my gut.

There is some good documentary photography out there. I don’t want to totally say I don’t like it. I do a form of documentation; where you draw those lines is very ambiguous. But I don’t like direct documentary photographers. Honestly, it doesn’t fit my way of working as a photographer.

Mixing Detroit and Mexico City, maybe I’ll say where it’s from, but it’s nice if it looks like something else. You’re also playing with a lot of other things. Movies inspired me. I like when people look like a movie star or it’s like somebody I recognize, but not quite. I’m drawn towards [these situations] and it sort of sits in front of you for a while and you work with it. A lot of people think that I work really fast, but sometimes I work for maybe twenty minutes or sometimes under a minute...sometimes I go back. That’s why the Street Photography Now book was a nice surprise, because I never really considered myself a street photographer, [even though] I do work in the streets a lot. I think a lot of people, the purists in that book, wouldn’t consider what I do “street,” because of this interacting with people and strangers and getting into situations. But to me every experience in front of you is game. I don’t know how you’re going to divide experience like that, pure or not pure.

f: I think purists in the street photography world would say it has to be completely observational, you can have no interaction, you can have no hand in the scene or what’s happening; I would also say would say that’s all predicated on a falsehood that somehow photography has a possibility of being objective.

MP: Maybe if you’re doing a document, you’re too directly thinking of what you’re documenting. You have an idea, “I’m a documenteur, I’m going to do this model that I’ve learned,” and it limits you. I think you have to be more open-minded.

There’s a lot of great documentary photography out there that I really enjoy, but I do feel I fit a niche that’s kind of special, that not a lot of people are doing. I mean its kind of a little surreal maybe... I love all the surrealists. Being playful with the world, molding it, I guess a little quantum physics thrown in there, destiny...I’m sure you’ve had these experiences where this magical thing just suddenly [doesn’t] match the scene very well - it’s a very magical thing you’re playing with sometimes, playing with reality.

It’s also very meditative. If you don’t feel inspired, you just gotta pick your camera up and go start shooting and find the inspiration.

Mas preguntas son mejores que una respuesta inmediata [“More questions are better than an immediate answer”], no? The best documentary images are open-ended.

f: Is there anything else you wanted to add about your interest behind the “Sexy o No?” project?

MP: I think it’s ‘cause I reached a little dead end, inspiration-wise, and I decided, these are great, I wish I could photograph like this, basically.

When I don’t have time to do my personal work, I’ve been going on these sites, looking around at vernacular photography. I’ve also got a photo album collection that I buy in trash markets.

The [“Sexy o No?” images] are also so sad to me, especially with the situation in Mexico with the narco war going on. A lot of people are trapped in their villages. People are using their cheap little cameras this way, they’re lonely or they’re trying to find somebody or their trying to find their self-esteem and they want to be voted on.

It’s a little pathetic after awhile. But [they’re] just great photographs, there’s great narratives. I like when you can see their books or what they have in their backgrounds. I’ll never be able to get in these situations, so it’s transporting yourself, it’s almost like [being] a photographer and taking pictures. As I build a collection of these, I find they relate because I’m asserting my own voice as a photographer on to these photographs.

You go through literally thousands of them, you might go through like a thousand in a couple days, and you take maybe twenty out, and you start finding this voice that matches your way of looking at the world.

f: How do you select the women? Have you noted trends in why you select images as part of your collection?

MP: Well, I was kind of playing with this “Sexy o No?” Sometimes they’re sexy, sometimes they’re not. But also these odd narratives that come through, like the one with the girl with the balloons around her?

That’s such a sad photograph. It’s like, why is she so sad? It seems like a celebration. All these questions open up. Who’s taking the photograph? Where is she? Why is she like that [emotionally]? And aesthetically, the color, the white balloons. A lot of stuff comes out, she’s sad, she’s depressed, maybe because of her economic situation or because her boyfriend hits her.

Then some are just really funny. Like this one with this lady with the tattoos and these small kind of like hatchets behind her?

It’s also the texture of now. People are taking pictures of themselves. I think it’s a shame that we’re going to lose this if somebody doesn’t take a few out to show what photography was like in 2010, 2011 with cell phones. There’s a lot of different motivations for me, but I think the main thing is I wish I took that picture. I really feel this envy of the people that were in these situations, in these places, and I wish I was there. I’m vicariously living through them as a photographer.

f: The dream of access.

MP: I do have pretty good access, I’m pretty good, but this is virtual access, the way we interact with photography now. This is how we’re virtually connected, there’s kind of this perverse intimacy between us, with all the social networks.

We’re all photographers, we’re all taking pictures, and we’re all saying something. But there’s a certain model because of the practical use of these images. These girls want to meet people.

I’m also taking text from their announcements of who they are. A lot of illiteracy comes through, they can’t really type. You can’t read their announcements sometimes, there’s so many “k”’s in them. They sort of phonetically sound the words out, but don’t really spell them correctly. So I feel like the [photographs] are how we’re communicating. It’s funny, it’s what’s sad, it’s funny, it’s tragic. Kind of like you’d find in my own work too.

f: I was just about to ask if there were themes in this work that you feel connect with the work you’ve done previously.

MP: Yeah, the casting of interesting people, or people that I find I’m drawn to. It’s a different sort of casting, because you’re selecting someone from a photo that already exists. But the themes… a little sad and a little pathetic, [getting] the pathetic to transcend into something else. Authenticity as well, something that’s real. Fantasy. Or it reminds me of a movie. Reminds me of somebody I can’t place my finger on. Like this lady at the bus station, she’s on a cell phone with a little square right behind her, kind of reminds me of people who are on a platform in Detroit.

And memory; I don’t photograph generally for memory. But a lot of people take snapshots of where they go, or their families, or their events. I don’t, that’s not my motivation as a photographer, but I do like to collect and see other people’s [images] made for memory, because you can put new meanings on them.

They just found fifteen decapitated heads outside of a supermarket in Acapulco, so I think of all this personal propaganda [in the photographs]. You know, people being happy, but with these slight expressions like they know it’s going to collapse around them. They seem to know it, but they don’t know it. I think they communicate this collapse around them, this chaos.

Here in Mexico people are getting shot up, people are corrupt. I had the same kind of silly grin on my face too. I’m from Detroit, you just sort of ignore [the violence], but it’s always at the edges of your consciousness. I was robbed by gunpoint six months ago at a café in the middle of my neighborhood. Got a cold pistol touching the side of my head. I’ve never been robbed like that in Detroit, I mean, that was a hairy situation. I tried to stand up, they told me to sit down again. [laughs] These things affect me in a way, so maybe this is my way of rebelling against this anxiety in a certain way, through sex, through the nervousness that you see in these people.

f: You were saying earlier you were working on this idea because you had come to a dead end with your personal work. Has it been recharging? And has it had an influence?

MP: For sure. I think so. I don’t think I’ve seen the potential results from it yet, but I feel this kind of inspiration now.

Looking at pictures for me is kind of like a nice charge. I used to go to the library as a kid, when I was like sixteen, and really get inspired. You come across a photographer, looking at pictures, [it’s] like a battery touching your skin. I lost that. As you photograph, you have to recharge yourself. Maybe in a way looking at these pictures recharges me a little bit and I also go back to seeing work that really inspired me to begin with. Sometimes I’m riding the subway, the Metro here, reflecting, and I’m like, “Am I going to be a photographer next year?” “Am I still going to be able to shoot?”

Those questions go through your head, but then the next day you wake up, you feel great. “I’m going to go out and shoot now.” But those doubts…it’s scary, because I want to shoot forever, I want to until I’m old.

You can’t force it. You have to get up, you have to work to make inspiration happen. It doesn’t really come by sitting down. You have to twiddle with it, start taking a few shots and you start feeling it again.

f: Does that doubt about continuing in photography have to do with your own history, living up to what you’ve done, and feeling you’ve worked through your subjects? Or with the jump in the sheer number of photographers the last ten-fifteen years and the extensive photographic territory they are now covering? Something else?

MP: Yeah, it’s a little overwhelming at times, I mean there’s a lot of great stuff out there. But that’s great...everybody’s shooting now and saying something. What’s frustrating is searching for that motivation to shoot and it’s not there. I was a little naïve before in my approach to my motivation. I want to change, I want to do something different. So then you say, “What am I going to do?” but you don’t want to approach yourself self-consciously, you want to be natural like it was before. You want to go out, you’re excited, you’re passionate, and it’s natural. [When] self-consciousness starts entering, you feel doubt as well. I’m not really a looker of what’s going on in photography. I like to go to exhibits, of course, and see books, but when I see good photographs in a book, I close it right away. Do you do that too?

f: I definitely get the “anxiety of influence” when strong images strike close to what I’m thinking about or working on.

MP: I don’t know if it’s influence, it’s more like I don’t want to see it. Maybe influence, but it’s more like, I want to go out and do it. I want to do it, I want to go out. [laughs]

f: For me, going through very strong work that’s similar to my own work can be inspiring, but there’s another side that’s almost like looking at the sun or something, you start looking and then you avert your gaze.

For me, knowing this person did this work this way and that person did it that way and both created really impressive bodies of work can prevent me from imaging that the work could be done or approached differently, especially if my project is just getting its legs and isn’t strong yet. It becomes hard to see beyond the work of the other person.

MP: Yeah, that’s a good point. That goes back to “Sexy o No?” then, maybe I feel protected then. I can look at these pictures, there’s no photographer behind these photographs.  I’m choosing these pictures. You feel safety and maybe a faith in the machine as well - it’s really just the scene in front of it that’s most important.

Again, that self-consciousness thing is really a battle that you’re always confronted with. And these are purely not self-conscious. I think that’s why a lot of people are attracted to vernacular photography. They’re more real than ever, they say way more than the documenteurs that are trying to have a project like, “I’m going to photograph hobos on the way to Guatemala”, you know....

f: Right, well, you just stole my next project, man.

MP: [Laughs] Hobos from California going down to Guatemala, yeah.

f: I wonder if on some level that it’s a pleasure to spend time with the vernacular images because not only are they not a threat to us as photographers, but also because of the romantic vision they give us of being able to go back to the pure natural excitement and unburdened mind that we had when we started photography – or that we imagine we had.

MP: Yeah. And this goes back to Metinides and what I admire about that guy. I met him at a show the other day and I said, “Hey, how’s it going Enrique, my name’s Mark, I really like your work,” and he just said to me right away, “I got work in the MoMA.”

I thought that was so cool. “I got work in the MoMA.” He’s like trying to prove something to me - he didn’t need to prove [anything] to me, man. I know! That’s great that you got work at the MoMA. I really wish I could have work at the MoMA and just say it blatantly. When somebody comes up to me, “Nice to meet you,” and say, “Hey, I got work at the MoMA.”

f: That’s great. To take it back to the “Sexy o No?” project, I have two more questions. No men?

MP: I [photograph] a lot of men in my [own] work. I was considering putting men in [this project], but I was looking through the men selection, it’s just a whole other discourse, how men present themselves, or how they photograph themselves. Mixing [men and women] up, I wasn’t finding the same themes. I’m intrigued however by the macho, this machoness in Mexico. You approach a guy in Mexico and you want to photograph him and all this stuff comes out. That’s a very complex subject in Mexico, the macho.

When I approach men here, I feel like we’re both getting something, it’s like finding something between us. They’re uncomfortable being approached by or talking to a guy. I use that. I like when I put men on the spot, so they confront what it means to talk to another man, in a non-macho way.

You can’t break through the machoness sometimes. It’s like, hey, I just want to chill out and have a beer and talk about whatever, I don’t want to talk about the fucking Americas football team, it’s always such a superficial conversation. And the photo within five minutes can break all that down.

In a way when you have someone in front of the camera, there’s definitely that tension, men and women. All our insecurities, all our hang-ups come down, and you play with that a little bit. Those themes I’m still trying to figure out, myself, as a photographer.

f: Is there any model for this project, of other photographers that have done selection and edit-based work or presented bodies of found photography? Have you found an interest in transforming the images as part of the creation of the project, either physically or in how they’re presented?

MP: Yeah, that’s kind of the shame of it sometimes. I feel like, just putting it in a gallery...what’s that? Basically I’m just collecting these right now. Maybe in terms of thinking this would be a good fit for the gallery, if I presented it really nice...but I go to a lot of shows where you just loose the [individual] works in the show.

Usually I get really excited after I’ve taken a good photograph, and then the last element of showing it really doesn’t excite me as much as I thought it would.

Vernacular photography always excited me. I have a big collection of photo albums. In Detroit I find attics full of photographs people left behind, I have boxes and boxes of photographs, and I’m just too lazy to go through them all. The Internet’s kind of a nice, easy way of looking at work, and organizing and contemplating it. This is my first opportunity to do something that I’ve always been interested in.

Edited for length and clarity.