TCF Ep. 324 - Yvonne Venegas

The Candid Frame: Conversations on Photography

Ibarionex R. Perello

Arts, Visual Arts

4.8 • 768 Ratings

🗓️ 31 May 2016

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As the daughter of a wedding photographer, Yvonne Venegas' work emerges from a reflection of portraiture charged by an analysis of social class and self-representation, particularly that of the Mexican upper middle class. She is interested in problematizing the idea of the perfect or official memory, by seeking moments of fragility or un-preparedness for the camera. Inhabited by upper middle-class social rituals, ideas of celebrity and beauty, upper class leisure, animals from a private zoo, beauty queens, or young wealthy children, she seeks to represent a fractured version of the images and situations that are traditionally understood to bring status and/or respect. Her experience growing up in the border has established in the way she views her subjects as well as the photographic practice itself, where she constantly looks for blurring lines between portraiture and documentary as well as explores the pulsating space between the perfect image and one that social studio photography could consider an error. When producing work, Venegas believes in the relationship to the world via a camera as well as via her participation in situations over long periods of time. Anthropological curiosity and empathy are both essential elements of her practice. An important outcome for her work is printed and framed for gallery presentation, as well as in book form. She has published three books Maria Elvia de Hank (2010), Inedito (2012) and Gestus (2015), all by the editorial house RM. Since 2009 Yvonne lives and works in Mexico City with her husband and two children. Resources: Yvonne Venegas http://yvonnevenegas2.weebly.com/ Elaine Stocki http://www.art.yale.edu/ElaineStocki Download the free Candid Frame app for your favorite smart device. Click here to download for iOS. Click here to download for Android Click here to download for Windows 8 Support the work we do at The Candid Frame with contributing to our Patreon effort. You can do this by visiting patreon.com/thecandidframe or visiting the website and clicking on the Patreon button.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Candid Frame is supported by donations by listeners just like you.
0:05.1	Help us to bring you great conversations with great photographers.
0:09.7	Support the show today with your monthly contribution through our Patreon effort at patreon.com
0:16.3	or click on the link in the show notes or the website at the candid frame.com.
0:25.9	Thank you.
0:32.4	This is anybody in X and this is The Candid Frame.
0:37.1	One of the things that I love about being
0:39.5	interested in photography today is that I'm able to discover photographers that I might
0:44.6	never had heard from 20 years ago. I mean if you weren't jacked into the fine art world or
0:50.4	working at an ad agency in New York, you would turn to photo magazines for inspiration.
0:55.9	But the problem there was that they were largely aimed at selling you gear, and the photographers
1:01.0	seem to be the same names over and over again. That's not to say that these photographers
1:06.7	weren't and aren't great, but it seemed that there were a lot of other photographers out there
1:12.2	that we weren't hearing from. Now with the age of the internet, you and I have access to photographers
1:18.1	from all over the world. We're privy to images and points of view that don't come from the usual
1:24.6	suspects and provide a fresh view of what it means to be a photographer.
1:30.6	Yvonne Vanegas has been producing her life's work in Mexico, first in Tijuana and now in Mexico City.
1:37.3	She focuses on issues of class and culture in the growing middle class of Mexico, where issues of
1:43.5	identity, sexuality, and class are being shaped by both traditional Mexican culture and popular cultural influences not only from the United States, but also all over the world.
1:54.9	Her work is another wonderful example of why it's so great to be a photographer today.
2:02.8	Yvonne, welcome, welcome to the Candid Frame.
2:05.5	It's a real pleasure and an honor to have you.
	...

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