VICTOR HUGO MORALES

Mar 20

Mexico City, 1982.

I am interested in telling stories in a natural way, letting my intuition guide me and the reading I make of the situations that happen in front of me. I currently live in my hometown. I take street photography, do documentary photography at weddings and also some commercial photography.

When and where did you start photographing?

VHM: I formally started at the age of 28. My educational background is in marketing with a specialty in finance and I worked for a pharmacy chain for a few years in an administrative position. Although I liked what I did in my job, after a while I understood that it did not satisfy me and that, on the other hand, I was interested in learning photography. So I started taking some basic workshops but it was not until 2011 that I decided to study it formally and since that day I always try to bring a camera with me, either a professional one or a cell phone camera, the latter being the one that has allowed me to get closer to street photography for practicality but also because the subjects I photograph feel less intimidated and it allows me to go by unnoticed.

Who (is) has (have) been the reference in your photography?

VHM: Alex Webb for the complexity of compositions, Joel Meyerowitz for his simple way of portraying everyday life, Boogie for the strength of his images and Peter Hugo for his portraits.

What do you want to communicate with your images?

VHM: I think I don't have a pretense or expectation to communicate something specific. In general, I feel much more comfortable not having any control over what is happening in front of me, nor planning the perfect light for a photo. I like to improvise with what I have in front of me, see the elements within the frame and let them act by themselves, allowing a relationship of dialogue to be established between them where chance plays an important role.

What does street and documentary photography mean to you?

VHM: For me the line is very thin between both, so I find myself between both genres all the time. The street is my day to day, the work I do from Monday to Friday requires me to spend a lot of time outside and this allows me to have a lot of freedom and openness to search and find situations or people that catch my attention in everyday life. On the other hand, the relationship with the documentary part is established more clearly in the work I do with Whitelab, a project in which we work photographing weddings and which has even become a personal project. For me it is about recording these events to fulfill the sentimental value of our clients but also, and this is very personal, understanding the dimension of these images as documents of a particular era, and the best example of this has been photographing weddings. in the context of the pandemic.

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

VHM: I sense that I am in a constant search to find meaning in these symbols that constantly appear in the photographs. But when I look at the work I do as a whole, it becomes clear that I am naturally attracted to what stands out from the ordinary, it can be a very strong personality or an introvert, the way some people dress or arrange themselves, a house that stands out for its color compared to those around it, a "tuned" or personalized car or an old one but that stands out for its characteristics in relation to the others. I'm also more into dark colors, deep shadows, and different types of contrast.