ALEJANDRA OROSCO

Alejandra Orosco (Lima, Peru - 1988)

I work as a documentary photographer, developing social and environmental projects.

The thematic thread that unites my photographic projects is the relationship between the intimate and the political.

I currently work as a freelance photographer for different media. At the same time, I co-direct Maleza, a self-managed Center for the Arts in the Sacred Valley of the Incas that proposes a dialogue between traditional and contemporary art.

My work has been published in different media, such as The Financial Times (UK), El Comercio (PE), Fisheye Magazine (FR), Culture trip (UK), Somos (PE), and Itau Cultural (BR).

My work has been exhibited in Peru, Mexico, Colombia, the United Arab Emirates and Switzerland.

When and where did you start photographing? Who has been the reference for your photography?

AO: I started with my brother's digital pocket camera. I would steal it occasionally for when I went out with friends. I began to portray the shapes, the lights. At the same time, I began to take my first photography course at the University, and I was lucky to have a professor who reminded us that every photo was correct. It only depended on what we wanted to do or say. That was a breaking point to feel free when taking photos. I no longer cared about the perfect technique but about having fun.

Who has been the reference for your photography?

AO: This question is a difficult one. I don't think there is one reference, I have many all the time, and these references change according to the topics that interest me.

I find my most relevant references in the creative processes, not only in the photographic result. Among some names that come to mind throughout these years of creation: Graciela Iturbide, Jorge Eielson, Victor Muñoz, Gihan Tubbeh, Zana Briski.

“All stories have two sides. We can go with the obvious, the news, or try to understand all the lags and impacts that each action we do leaves behind. When I look at what I have been doing since my beginnings in photography, all my projects seek to tell the most intimate part behind universal themes”

How do you make an image from a family album and collage?

AO: Until now, I have never worked with a personal archive, although in my family, I see how my father reinterprets his own story daily from his photographic archives. That is something that, at some point, I want to start exploring to rediscover my own story.

But where I have done it and felt the creative freedom to recreate an implausible story through the archive has been in the town of Peñol in Antioquia, Colombia, where I worked on the project "Only memories do not drown" and talks about the story of a peasant town that sunk in 1978 due to the construction of a hydroelectric plant that supplied electricity to 30% of the Colombian population..

I arrived at this town where nothing was happening and discovered that the original town was under a large lagoon presented as a tourist attraction. My head began to create all kinds of stories underwater, but of course, it was impossible to go down and see the remains of that town. I came from a documentary school, and felt a great challenge that I wanted to accept.

That was how I began to review the photographic archive of the old town, and in a liberating and fundamental act, I began to copy them and see what would happen to them if I sank them underwater. In this town, it rained all day, so I started with the rain, water from the lagoon, and all kinds of water. While at the same time, I was getting to know and asking more about the history, I came to the feeling that the images of that old town would never be the same because the memories of those who had lived there were fading over time. And just as I could not witness what was before, future generations could not either; they would only see that history through those already distorted memories. And so I collected a lot of material from the archives.

“I worked on the project “Only memories do not drown” and talks about the story of a peasant town that sunk in 1978 due to the construction of a hydroelectric plant that supplied electricity to 30% of the Colombian population”

What do you want to convey through your images?

AO: All stories have two sides. We can go with the obvious, the news, or try to understand all the lags and impacts that each action we do leaves behind. When I look at what I have been doing since my beginnings in photography, all my projects seek to tell the most intimate part behind universal themes. Whoever sees my work can wonder how those who live those stories feel, put themselves in the shoes of the other, living in their own flesh another feeling.

In collaboration with the photographer Paul Gambin

How are your life experiences reflected in the symbols that we see in your photographs?

AO: I think it's inevitable that what we do has a bit of us and that the issues we address don't just happen by chance. I understand now that each project I have worked on reflects personal experiences and that it is easier for me to recognize myself in other people's stories than in my own. In many of my projects I have addressed issues such as loss, fear, fragility, the violence. All these are feelings I have experienced recurrently at different times in my life, in very other circumstances, but they are always there as a leitmotiv.

After 11 years of my first photographic project, I like to realize that the same questions appear in each personal work I do; they change and adapt to different moments in life and what surrounds me, but they almost always start from the same. They say photography isn't therapy, and it isn't. But I must say that it has helped me, and continues to help me, understand myself a lot within this world where I live, where I come from, and where I am going.

“In many of my projects I have addressed issues such as loss, fear, fragility, the violence. All these are feelings I have experienced recurrently at different times in my life, in very other circumstances, but they are always there as a leitmotiv”

HERNÁN CASTRO

ALEJANDRO SOLIS