Photographer Interview: Damaso Reyes

There's a classic quality to this photojournalist's work that is unique - perhaps it's the Leica glass, the wide angle portraits or the grain of black and white film. Damaso's work has taken him around the world and his images take you along for the ride.

Check Damaso Reyes' photography online and friend him on Facebook.

D&B: Where are you from?
DR: I was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York

D&B: What kind of photography do you shoot and how did you get started - any "formal" training?
DR: I developed an interest in photography as a teenager. Having read National Geographic for several years I fell in love with the idea of becoming a photojournalist and began to teach myself technique from copies of the magazine Photographic. I eventually took a class in high school and began freelancing at that point. I went on to study photography at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.


D&B: What cameras or techniques do you use?
DR: I've used a wide range of equipment and techniques over the years. Now I almost exclusively use Leica rangefinder cameras with Kodak film. After using single lens reflex cameras for most of my career I feel in rangefinder cameras I have found the best tool to express my vision. I'm primarily a photojournalist so I adhere to those values, namely interfering as little as possible with what I am trying to document. I want to serve as a window through which the viewer can witness what I am experiencing.

Singing, Copyright Damaso Reyes

D&B: Who are your mentors (in photography)?
DR: Chester Higgins Jr. of the New York Times has been a great friend and mentor. Dr. Deb Willis, chair of NYU's Department of Photography and Imagining, has also been incredibly helpful over the past few years.


D&B: Have you experienced any setbacks or different treatment along your photography career that you would attribute to being a photographer of color? (this question is optional)
DR: Yes. That's the short answer. The long answer is the challenges that photographers of color face is much more covert than overt. It has a lot to do with how we see the world. Since most of us are outsiders in one way or another our vision can be threatening or at odds with the life experience of decision makers like editors who are very rarely people of color. The reason I became a photographer was to try to show people the way that I see the world. Apparently that is not what sells newspapers and magazines.

D&B: When did you realize you could have a career in photography? Describe your journey towards becoming a working photographer.
DR: It happened when I was still in High school and started freelancing for the Amsterdam News here in New York. After I published a few pictures I thought to myself "that's easy!" Of course I've spent the last fifteen years learning otherwise. But I was able to achieve a lot very early in my career so perhaps I wasn't as realistic about the challenges involved as I should have been.

The industry has also changed a lot in the last fifteen years. But for me photography has always been more about pursuing a passion than getting a paycheck, which is a good thing as it turns out!

Berlin, Copyright Damaso Reyes

D&B: What do you hope to achieve with your photography?
DR: I hope to serve as a bridge between people. I hope that my work can, in some small way, give voice to those who all too often find themselves marginalized and ignored by mainstream society. Personally I feel that as a photographer of color I have a special responsibility to help create a more just society.

D&B: What's your dream photography project?
DR: It is the project I am working on right now, The Europeans, which is exploring how Europe is changing as the European Union expands. It is a tremendous challenge which has allowed me to grow as an artist and a person. I've still got a long way to go but I feel like I have been able to capture some of what I set out to when I began on this road four years ago.

D&B: What's the biggest (life) lesson you've learned through photography?
DR: Patience! Photography is mostly about waiting, not shooting. Sometimes you're waiting for the light, other times for a grant to let you go and photograph. I have never been good at waiting but I have gotten a lot better at it over the years. I've learned to think of my work not as a sprint but as a marathon.

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Interview with Jason Reed, co-founder of the Borderland Youth Documentary Arts Project

The following interview is with photographer Jason Reed, co-founder of the Borderland Youth Documentary Arts Project. When Jason contacted me I was impressed/proud/relieved that his project existed. Practically running a mini United Nations, he mentors Native American and Latino youth plus refugees from Iraq, Burma, Somalia, Sudan, and Tanzania as students.

The Borderland Youth Documentary Arts Project blog has great photographs with recent updates on the program's events - check out the Video Snippets from Day 2 of the Newcomers Refugee Program, San Antonio, TX. With no sound and in color, it's a raw, modern day version of a silent film which has the same intimate feeling as stills. Follow the Borderland Youth Documentary Arts Project on Facebook.

D&B: Where are you from? Where do you live now?

JR: I grew up in San Angelo, Texas, which is a medium-sized farming and ranching city in the central-west part of the state. After living in Illinois and New Mexico for grad school and a term in AmeriCorps, I now live in San Marcos, Texas and where I teach at Texas State University-San Marcos.

D&B: How did you come to know the kids in the Borderland Youth Documentary Arts Project?

JR: There are a number of different programs in the Borderland Youth Documentary Arts Project, such as Mi Voz, which takes place in the border town of Presidio, Texas and Newcomers, which takes place with global refugee youth now living in San Antonio, Texas. Each of the programs has begun with a connection to a public school teacher, often developed through my friend, colleague, and the co-founder of the Project, Ryan Sprott. Ryan taught high school in rural West Texas for many years and is now a doctoral student at the University of Texas-San Antonio.

Through Ryan’s work in education, we have developed many contacts with teachers looking to extend opportunities to their students outside of what most public schools offer. We work hand in hand with teachers, often outside of school buildings and school days, with the teachers, relying on them to identify students who would both benefit from and contribute to the Project the most.

We see it is as a grassroots collaboration with public educators, where they are providing the students and access and we are providing the tools and some new avenues to share their stories.

D&B: How many other projects like yours that you know of exist in Texas?

JR: There are actually quite a few programs in Texas that provide arts access to youth. These are mostly run by non-profit arts organizations as well as the many museums that have arts education departments.

However, I do not know of any other projects in Texas that focus specifically on young people telling their own personal, familial, and cultural stories through documentary means. And because we are based out of Texas State University-San Marcos, I believe we are rare in terms of both connecting young people to higher education and the creation of a public archive for all of the student work.

©Habiba Waliyow, Newcomers Refugee Youth Program, San Antonio, Texas 2009

D&B: What made you want to give a voice to a subset of the US population that is typically silent because of what some might call their "illegal" or disadvantaged status?

JR: It is important to clarify with whom we work. We work with a diverse group of students from many backgrounds such as Sudanese, Native American, Latino, Burmese, Anglo, Iraqi, Filipino, Rwandan and many other backgrounds who live in the US/Mexico borderland region. For example, the Newcomers students are part of one of the largest refugee resettlement cities in the U.S. and represent students from many different ethnicities. The Mi Voz students live along the Texas-Mexico border and have unique experience of living, traveling, experiencing, and being influenced between two countries on a daily basis. In terms of citizenship, our students have a cultural citizenship that is definitely more expansive than most of us who do not live in a border community and/or have emigrated from one country to another.

We believe the students’ diverse backgrounds and perspectives bring a power and vitality to the dialogue of American life. While it is well documented that many of the student groups with whom we work have traditionally been under and/or misrepresented by traditional mediums and that the telling and dissemination of their stories have often been left in the hands of outsiders, it is crucial to strike out language that imposes deficits on the students—we do not approach our programs with the mindset of working with “illegal” or “disadvantaged” youth.

Through our close workings with such talented and insightful students, we have often been humbled and have delightfully had many of our own misconceptions stripped away. Seeing the students’ abilities, backgrounds, and insight has left no room for us to see the youth as “disadvantaged,” and, not only is viewing students as “disadvantaged” falsely limiting to the students, such an approach is limiting to the observers of their work.

We avoid the notion that we are helping or empowering the youth, but rather we see it as the young people are, in so many ways, empowering us to see the world in a more realistic and complete way.

The essential goal of the project is to provide excellent tools and resources (cameras, art supplies, professional mentors) for young people in order that they may tell their own stories – personal, familial, and cultural – in their own way. This approach, one of encompassing participatory documentation, will provide a much richer, complex and more complete understanding of the region.

Certainly, we understand that traditional models of documentary work are valid, and an outsider’s perspective on a place, people, or situation can be important. But we MUST have a large presence of people with an inside perspective who tell and share their own stories. If not, if it is only outsiders, then we are doomed to see and hear the same conventionally biased and inherently flawed stories over and over. With a sole focus on traditional approaches, we are missing vital voices, and it is the incorporation of these traditionally missing voices that is a driving force of the Project.

D&B: How is the Borderland Youth Documentary Arts Project funded?

JR: Currently, we are funded through grants, community and personal donations, and, because we are still young, our own pockets. We never want money to prevent us from working with young people so we do work hard to make our programs run efficiently and on as little funding as is necessary to achieve our objectives. In the near future we plan on creating a series of limited edition artists books and signed prints that raise funds for further programming.

©Starla Gros-Ventre, Two Worlds Native American Youth Program, Albuquerque, New Mexico 2008

D&B: You work with teenage youth - describe what's unique about their photographic vision.

JR: The most unique thing about a young person’s photographic vision is their freedom. By this I mean that the youth we work with do not have specific aspirations to show work in a gallery, sell their prints, or have a book of photographs published. And they are not creating work to get into art school or for a grade in a class. But rather, they are taking photographs to tell their personal familial and cultural stories - free of the baggage many of us carry as photographers. It is really a joy to see them photograph with no expectations and only because they want to show us something special in their lives.

D&B: What kind of exposure are you looking for? How will you share their work with the world?

JR: Exposure of the work is a really significant aspect of the Project. Our major objective is to use creative mediums such as photography and creative writing as a means to add the personal, familial and cultural stories and perspectives of these young students to the collective archive of American life.

In order to achieve such, we must share the resulting work with as many people as possible through web exposure, exhibitions, publications, documentary films, presentations, and the building of a public archive where the work can be carefully protected for future generations. These youth voices are truly significant and cannot be overlooked if we are to more completely understand our complex world.

It is our goal to provide the students with tools to create and opportunities to share.

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Photographer Interview: Carlos Alvarez Montero

Recently I discovered Carlos' series of Mexican Skinheads which I found fascinating because of my obsession with what I like to call "culture mash", the convergence of two seemingly antithetical cultures or identities in one person. View this series and more of Carlos Alvarez Montero's photography plus check out his recent Cool Hunting interview. Follow him on Twitter @alvarezmontero.

D&B: Where are you from?
CAM: I was born and raised in Mexico City. I have been living and working between NYC and Mexico City for the last two years.

D&B: What kind of photography do you shoot and how did you get started - any "formal" training?
CAM: I am into documentary photography, mainly portraiture. I started taking some workshops and working as an assistant. I am currently doing an MFA at the School of Visual Arts in NYC.

D&B: What cameras or techniques do you use?
CAM: Mamiya 645 - this camera has the right size to fit in a regular backpack or messenger bag so i’m able take it anywhere. I have been working with it for the last 12 years and it makes the work everytime. By the way, I love film.

Ramon, from the series "Adopt & Adapt" © Carlos Alvarez Montero

D&B: Who are your mentors (in photography)?
CAM: I could say my mentors are my first photo teacher Saul Serrano and the photographer I used to assist, Edgar Ladrón de Guevara, I learned a lot with them, not just about photography itself but also that it wasn’t an easy road but that it was worth taking.

D&B: When did you realize you could have a career in photography? Describe your journey towards becoming a working photographer.
CAM: Since I entered into my first photography workshop at the age of 19, I knew I wanted to live from photography. I didn’t know about the difficulties or anything, I just knew that was what I wanted to do. After like a year of doing workshops I started working as an assistant for an advertising photographer. Everything happened very natural, one day I was assisting, the next I was published in magazines.

D&B: What do you hope to achieve with your photography?
CAM: I use photography as a way to have access to worlds that intrigue me. I hope I can share with others through my images what I learn about them.

Little-saint-jude, from the series "Adopt & Adapt" © Carlos Alvarez Montero

D&B: What's your dream photography project?
CAM: I don’t really have a dream project, I am currently working in three projects that i would like to finish by the next year (that’s my dream), one is a book about my series "adopt & adapt" about the creation of identity through the construction of the appearance, the other is a book of portraits of Mexican guitarists, and the third is a film documentary called M (of Michoacan) about the gang culture in a small town in Michoacan, Mexico which started as a photo series and then turned into a film.

D&B: What's the biggest (life) lesson you've learned through photography?
CAM: Everytime I shoot is a lesson, I try to learn as much as I can from all my subjects.

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Photography Portfolio Review Experience, Tips and Process

En Foco is a 25-year old non-profit dedicated to cultural diversity in photography. One of the many programs they offer to support photographers of Latin American, African and Asian descent are their portfolio review sessions.

Newbie jitters made me nervous as hell of the portfolio review process. Deep down every photographer wants acceptance of and praise for their work. Any rejection from these esteemed photography professionals might make one feel like your hours of shooting were just a waste of time (and money); truly validating natural insecurities that deny your talent.

Yet the main take away from these review sessions is that they are what you make of them; and you should make the most of them. It's advised that you go in prepared, but its likely you'll get a unique response from every single reviewer and as a fellow photographer later said to me "you have to work to satisfy yourself ultimately."

The portfolio I showed included images from Panama, an intimate survey of the experience I have when I go back to my mother's home country. Agonizing and editing for weeks, I presented a tight set of 10 diptychs, juxtaposing images of flora/landscape with portraits.

Hanging with other photographers in the waiting room/lounge, I tried to expel my nervousness by talking about it. A woman soothed me by saying that the worst I'd hear is that I should shoot more. That didn't sound so bad!

So in hopes that others might benefit from my experience, I've outlined some general photography portfolio review tips and suggestions that I got from each person I met with.

Jessica Ingram, Adjunct Professor at Tisch, NYU

It is advised that you read up on the reviewers before you meet face to face. Through research I read about Jessica's own photography work which focused on her family. So I thought she could relate to my own vision. I was right and Jessica suggested I:

• Keep a daily diary - even if it's just a simple list of what I ate
  
  
• Investigate the way I see myself in the work - take self portraits
  
  
• In preparation, create shot lists before I take my next trip - sometimes when you're in the moment it's hard to remember or realize what you want to capture

Jessica ended by recommending I look at the work of Liz Cohen and Jessamyn Lovell.

Rosie Gordon-Wallace, Director/Curator of the Diaspora Vibe Gallery

A Jamaican-born licensed medical microbiologist, Rosie's love for Caribbean and Latin American art is at the core of the foundation for her gallery. From a director/curator's perspective, Rosie suggested I think about the presentation of my work in a gallery setting:

• Think about larger prints
  
  
• Push the technical through experimenting with different paper
  
  
• Consider creative framing options and what would make people want to buy the work
  

For updates on what's happening at the gallery, read the Diaspora Vibe Gallery blog.

Elvis Fuentes - Curator, El Museo del Barrio

A Cuban art specialist, Elvis constantly flipped through my work, back and forth. Studying the images, he made comments unique to each one during which he offered this advice:

• Cover all possibilities that exist within your chosen theme/vision
  
  
• Explore the 5 senses, develop more than just a visual experience
  

Elizabeth Ferrer - Director, BRIC Rotunda Gallery

Experienced curator and writer specializing in Mexican and Latino art and photography, Elizabeth is an authority on the work of Lola Alvarez Bravo, one of my mentors. In her review she quietly commented:

• The intimate image is more successful

• Consider self publishing
  

Elizabeth ended by suggesting I get to know [the work of] her colleague Ricardo Viera, Professor of Art and Curator at Lehigh University.

Erin Riley-Lopez - Curator, The Bronx Museum of the Arts

After a quick review of my work, Erin asked me a series of questions about my work then suggested enrolling in the BXMA's AIM (Artist in the Marketplace), a thirteen-week seminar program offered annually in the fall and the spring, teaching the marketing and business aspects of being an artist.

Michael Itkoff - Founding Editor, Daylight Magazine

Hanging in the photographer's lounge, you'll hear of reviewers who have slots open (so stick around). This is how I got my 20 minute review with Michael. As editor of a documentary photography magazine, I imagined Michael looks at amazing images all day, all the time. Here he tells me what he likes to see most in photographs:

• Images should reveal layers and 3rd levels of meaning

During his review Michael referenced the florals of photographer Hiroshi Watanabe, Jonathan Harker's postcards of Panama plus he told me of other artists working on the isthmus like Rose Cromwell and Lorena Endara.


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Get updates on new photographer interviews plus news on contests, art shows and informed commentary on what's happening with diversity in photography. Subscribe to Dodge & Burn Photography Blog: Diversity in Photography by Email

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