fototazo: Interview: Margarita Valdivieso

Margarita Valdivieso was a fototazo microgrant recipient in 2011. In 2015 she took part in the Intensive Workshop for Emerging Latin American Photographers at the University of Iowa through fototazo. In 2016 she held a residency at The Fountainhead in Miami. Between the two experiences she developed her project Missed Connections.

Valdivieso is a visual artist based in Medellin, Colombia. Within her artistic practice she's interested in questioning and subverting cultural phenomena related to specific local contexts, territories or communities. Specifically, she has worked with the notions of body/landscapes, gender and identity among others. She's been awarded the fototazo Microgrant (2011), selected as an artist for the Vivarte Residency in Sao Paulo, Brazil (2012), awarded funds for the publication of the magazine Cosmopolitican Colombia (2014) from the Artist of the UDEA Researchers Fund, selected as the grant winner of the Alps Art Academy in Switzerland (2016) and selected for a scholarship by the Colombian Ministry of Culture for the artist residency "Missed Connections” at The Fountainhead Residency, Miami (2016). She was also selected for the book Colombian Women Photographers that will be released in spring 2017 and was just selected to participate in the New York Portfolio review in April 2017 conducted by The New York Times Lens Blog and the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.

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fototazo: Tell us about the basics of "Missed Connections" and its development.

Margarita Valdivieso: "Missed Connections" is based on a section of Craigslist where people write about missed connections that they had with other people on the streets. The section is subcategorized into genders - for example men for women, women for women, etc. - and it aims to reconnect you with people you may have seen, but not talked to or had real contact with. I find the concept "missed connection" a particular cultural idea that creates a scenario and narrative that I'm interested in working with.

f: What are some of the ways that the specifics of place in Iowa and Miami influence the visual development of your project?

MV: I think every place gives me clues and ideas to create variations of the same big aesthetic constellation. Every city gives you a different pattern of color and circumstances: in Miami, for example, the idea and reality of water and of a humid place were very important. It allowed me to shoot and experiment with underwater disposable cameras and recognize a palette of colors that were very particular to this context.

f: The American landscape has a long and rich tradition in both painting and photography and I think that makes it one of the harder genres to work in. As you explore the country for the first time, what is your engagement with this tradition and how have you looked to move beyond repeating traditional genre formula?

MV: This project is a commentary about American landscape through the narratives of modern love and how culture affects landscape and creates it. I've been more influenced by Latin American landscape, aesthetics and imaginations and for me, to think about the American landscape is to create connections and understand differences between the American and Latin American traditions. Although I've been influenced by some American artists whom have developed ideas around the same topic, such as Edward Hopper, I like my position as an outsider that allows me to look at the landscape as a whole portrait of a culture.

f: In an interview with the Colombian photography site Fotomeraki, you state the project takes a sarcastic and critical stance of online social romantic phenomena and also the American landscape. What about these subjects has caused you to develop that stance, and is there a reason for coming to assume the same stance towards both?

MV: In the interview I was talking about how, through my project, I try to be sarcastic about online romantic phenomena. Nevertheless, I'm not assuming the same stance about the American landscape. I utilize the landscape to make a portrait or create a comparison between reality and the missed connection expressions of love. In that sense, I feel that by taking pictures of landscapes I'm approaching that sarcastic touch, but my feeling about it is more of the sensation of solitude of a country where people mostly live "inside."

Page spread from the "Missed Connections" book maquette © Margarita Valdivieso

f: A lot of the images to me feel wistful, melancholic, meditative, quiet and emotionally honest. Do you agree? If you do, how does that kind of image-making work with ideas of sarcasm and critique?

MV: I do completely agree. The landscape is alive and it has its own emotional weight. My intention is to create a critical perspective on the topic of the expressions of love in modernity. The sarcasm comes by the comparison of the pictures and the solitude of the landscapes. This is why fanzines or photobooks are such an important format in the development of this project because they allow me to place the image and the text side by side, heightening the contrast between them.

f: Other photography projects have worked with social media, most notably Nate Larson and Marni Shindelman's Geolocation project which they began in 2007. How does your project relate – or does it relate – to the existing photographic conversation about social media?

MV: Yes, social media or virtuality is an important concept of this project; does social media affect, transform or re-create landscapes?

f: Finally, in Miami you presented "Missed Connections" as a live event with musicians singing boleros. Can you tell us more about it?

MV: Yes, "Missed Connections" is also a collaborative project. The intention of doing performances or happenings is to create interactions with poets where I take photographs; the events also include slam poetry and popular regional music, because musicians can bring endemic narratives, atmospheres and local tales to the project. It is a project based on the American landscape built on the locality.

3.17.2017

Interview: Margarita Valdivieso