To Rise Above Ruins
El Suspiro de la Historia
“The sigh of history rises over ruins…Visual surprise is natural in the Caribbean—
it comes with the landscape, and faced with its beauty, the sigh of history dissolves…
but, poetry conjugates both tenses simultaneously: the past and the present.”
excerpts from Fragments of Epic Memory by Derek Walcott
In an act of reclamation, I have assembled a counter archive of found, constructed and reimagined photographs to serve as a site for understanding issues surrounding the identity of my people.
Public Memory
The most popular depictions of the island and its residents were published as advertisements encouraging tourism and enterprise or have been commissioned by federal agencies in the form of documentary photographs. In contrast to the ways advertising photography has been used to harken tourists to visit and consume, I have recreated studio still lifes that serve to critique, questioning the cultural signifiers of “Puerto Ricanness” partially shaped by colonizing forces.
Along with advertisements, I have applied this critical approach to the documentary images which circulated since the invasion in 1898 to the dawn of the American Century. From 2015-2018, I revisited the original sites of these historical photographs, seeing how the passage of time changed the landscape, recording the surrounding conditions in direct conversation with the Underwood brothers, Jack Delano, The Rosskams and others.
By subverting the vestiges of photographic genres like advertising, fine art, documentary and editorial forms, a larger discussion on photographic representation surfaces. How do a colonized people construct their identity in and against the legacies of depiction?
Dos Gotas de Agua
Personal Memory
This series pieces together personal family photographs and documents that trace the course
of our migration to the states from Bayamón > Spanish Harlem > South Bronx > Central Florida.
Like so many in the diaspora, they hold the stories of “what futures are promised; and which
ones are forgotten.”
No Puedo Ver El Fondo
Land Memory
Early photographs of the landscape in Puerto Rico were often about exploration and extraction. Water sources were part of the spoils of that conquest. But the land has its own way of holding and recording memory.
Continuing my use of responding to archives and revisiting politically charged sites in Puerto Rico,
I began making cyantotypes along bodies of water on the island that are in jeopardy or have contested histories. With my partner Adrian Metoyer, we make these in rivers, oceans and channels with whatever water, sun and material are available to us.
This series is inspired by my working friendship with Jose Caraballo-Pagan and the beautiful people at Proyecto ENLACE in the El Caño Martín Peña community.