As a child, cinema opened a world of images to Patricia Aridjis (Contepec, Michoacán, 64 years old).
The Mexican photographer says that her grandfather ran the only movie theater in town and she and her cousins had the privilege of watching all the movies and eating the sweets that her grandmother sold.
There was no concern about the content of the films, nor was there any consideration of whether they were suitable for children.
“The cinema was a very special event, because there were not many activities in the town.
I remember that I was very impressed by having seen
Boccaccio 70
,
which was made up of several shorts by different directors, and Fellini's story was crazy, about a woman who left a spectacular to chase a man.
As a child, those things amazed me,” Aridjis recalls.
“I am very visual and I owe that to my grandfather and his cinema,” she says.
That world of imagination turned into a career that has made her one of the most prominent photographers in Mexico.
Aridjis' camera explores sexist brutality, the pain of disappearances and the daily struggle of women for their rights.
The photographer has inaugurated a retrospective at the Photography Archive Museum in Mexico City that brings together more than three decades of her work.
With the title
Eyes of a Flying Woman
, it presents moving stories of nannies who must leave their children to take care of others, those of obese women who have learned to love their bodies, mothers who have suffered the horror of the disappearance of their children or prisoners who look through the bars to see how others receive visitors while they are alone.
“I really like to scrutinize people's faces and attitudes.
If I get on the subway, I'm making up a little bit of the story of the people I'm looking at, although I think sometimes it must make them uncomfortable,” she says.
“I am very concerned about social issues, what is happening in my country, which I think you cannot ignore.
There are always an infinite number of things to tell and I am thinking about that all the time and about the way to give my opinion through photography,” she says.
The exhibition will be open until May 5.
Ask.
How do you approach your stories?
Answer.
In recent years, most of my projects have been about women.
I have a series called
Rollo para otros
, which is about babysitters, because for a long time I had the concern of doing something about domestic work.
The stories of those women in uniform in those huge houses, living two realities, caught my attention.
They are immersed in a life that is not their own and in a very precarious situation in their communities.
Every time I saw them, they shocked me.
Q.
What caught your attention?
A.
They have a more dramatic point: they leave their own children to take care of other people's children.
What sparked my interest was a film called
Paris I Love You
, which is made up of several shorts, and one of them, made by Brazilian filmmakers, is about a Latin nanny who lulls her son to sleep with a lullaby from her community, leaves him asleep and goes to a mansion to take care of a child, whom he lulls to sleep with the same song.
It moved me enormously.
What I did was photograph these women in their own communities, with their children, at their parties and, on the other hand, photograph them in this work environment that has to do with affection, but also with discrimination, with this racist issue that Sometimes we Mexicans do not recognize it, but it does prevail.
Q.
Racism is another evil that affects women in Mexico.
A.
Yes, and they are generally dark women taking care of blonde children.
They are confined in a very small, very austere space, which has nothing to do with the rest of the house.
It was very important to do this project.
It's not even a matter of good or bad;
It is not that the rich are bad because they are rich, nor are the poor good because they are poor.
They are dynamics that we have very normalized.
Q.
How do you get these women to open up to your camera?
A.
It is a skill that you acquire over time.
I try to show the photographed person that it is an honest question, that it is not a photograph that violates them, but rather dignifies them.
I talk a lot with people before photographing them and in many cases I even establish links, because I think it is important.
The Mexican photographer Patricia Aridjis at the Photography Archive Museum on February 29, 2024 in Mexico City.Hector Guerrero
Q.
Was it difficult for you to photograph women in prisons?
A.
That project marked me, it is like a watershed in my professional and personal life.
It made me reflect on justice in Mexico, on freedom.
My coexistence was very close with some of them, because I followed them during the seven years that the project lasted.
At first, everything worried me, I was a little afraid of their reaction to the camera.
I talked a lot with these women, I put the camera aside and lived with them.
This is how trust emerged and I was able to be in very intimate moments.
Q.
How did this project mark you?
A.
I got hooked on the project to such a degree that it was hard for me to put it down.
They decorate their cells as a way of survival, to feel less confined;
They talk about their cell as if it were their home.
I lived with them, ate, we laughed, they told me their troubles and that was very endearing.
They did leave me very disturbed, because although it gave me some comfort to be there with them, I felt sheltered, loved, they did cause me a lot of concern.
Q.
Why?
A.
Because they are tremendous stories.
There were women who committed murders, robberies with cruelty.
I learned not to judge.
When they tell you their stories you realize that they come from families where violence is very normalized.
Several of them have suffered abuse, lived on the streets, the families they come from are dysfunctional.
Then you understand why they are in jail or what led them to commit a crime.
I heard tremendous stories, but I also tried to understand them and put myself in their shoes.
The Mexican photographer Patricia Aridjis at the Photography Archive Museum on February 29, 2024 in Mexico City.Hector Guerrero
Q.
Is your work a form of denunciation in a country where eleven women are murdered a day?
Q.
It is difficult for me to use the word complaint, because it seems a little pretentious of me to say it.
This is my point of view and it does have a critical attitude.
I have this series called
Sangre de mi sangre
, which has to do with women who have lost a child, and my original goal was not for it to have a social focus, but it did happen.
Almost all the stories are crossed by the violence that we are experiencing.
What I wanted was to photograph this great pain that is the loss of a child and when I took on the task of looking for the stories, I found that many are crossed by violence: women who have a missing child or who lost a child in an assault, or the stories of the mothers from ABC [school].
Femicides are already a tremendous case, because they are scandalous figures and we have normalized them, we have even trivialized them.
We have to say it and we have to tell it.
Q.
What reaction do you expect from a person when they see your work?
R.
I hope they are
mirrored
.
It fills me a lot when someone looks at the photos and is moved, that is a treasure.
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