Rafael Soldi’s new monograph, Imagined Futures, published by Candor Arts, uses the photobooth as a sacred space for healing amidst cultural and political turmoil.
Seattle based photographer, curator, and activist Rafael Soldi’s latest series and limited edition photobook lowers the volume on the heated dialogues in which nationality, gender, sexual orientation and their role in identity continue to inflame and divide.
Using quiet self-portraits made in traditional photo booths around the world, Soldi invites us to witness his reckoning with adolescent traumas shaped by socio-religious discrimination and ill-fitting masculine tropes. With closed eyes, he mutes extraneous noise to hear his inner monologue and find empowerment and solace within himself.
I chatted with Soldi about photo booths as interlocutors in the self-portrait process and healing wounds through ritual and performance.
Roula Seikaly in conversation with Rafael Soldi
Roula Seikaly: Why are photo booths important for this project?
Rafael Soldi: I’m not interested in the photo booth from a pop culture perspective nor the zeitgeist that it conjures, though you could say that its long history with vernacular performance is quite relevant here. The photo booth reminds me of a Catholic confessional, akin to the ones I knew in my youth—which always made me uncomfortable.
A photo booth is also very public and very private, a very small stage for a monumental performance. Every time I step into one of these picture-making chambers it makes a photograph of me mourning in its belly—a very poetic action for a machine.
The booth, in its autonomous way, thus becomes a collaborator, both witness and complicit in each performance. It also creates a unique image of a unique moment—there are no negatives, nor duplicates, simply a one-of-a-king record of a single moment in time.
Seikaly: How does a photo booth, as opposed to a studio set with lights and a backdrop, affect self-portraiture? Does the mechanical intervention relieve the burden of authorship and aesthetic or other concerns in your experience?
Soldi: Absolutely, there are many decisions that the booth makes on your behalf which is both unpredictable and liberating. For starters, there is a set format—each booth makes four images of a set scale. The format is pretty much standard across the globe. This allowed me to make the work while I traveled over the course of two years, as well as keeping this sense of repetition and uniformity that I was seeking. A photo booth also does not need to be operated, it is independent so I can focus on the internal elements of the process—the imagining, the grieving, the inner-gazing—while it makes a record of the moment.
So truly we are collaborators, these machines and I. I liked that each booth was unpredictable; depending on the day or the place or the weather, the chemistry could be old or new, or the strip could get scratched as it left the tray. I chose to only work with black-and-white analog booths—this was simply an aesthetic choice that spoke to how I envisioned the final piece, and consistent with the aesthetics of my practice. Conceptual and aesthetic parameters were helpful in the pursuit of a subject that is somewhat abstract. It’s important to me that these are not simply “photo booth selfies”—it just turned out to be a very practical and conceptually sound vehicle for picture-making.
Seikaly: Do you prepare for each sitting, or is the choice to step into a photo booth as you encounter them spontaneously? Is that an important part of this project?
Soldi: It’s both—for logistical reasons I can’t just hop into a booth when I pass by it, nor can I jump out of my chair in search for one when the thought strikes. I keep a notebook and also keep notes on my phone—the project unfolded slowly over the course of two years. Every time I thought about my future in the home I immigrated from, every time I imaged what my life would have been like, I made a point to write it down or remember it. Sometimes these visions were very clear and dream-like, and sometimes they were just a feeling as if a spirit was passing through me.
For a long time, I had unresolved feelings with my country of birth—a mix of sadness and resentment, as well as pride and love. I didn’t want to think about the hard parts, I didn’t want to think about how as a kid I struggled so much to picture my future in that place—a feeling that your own home has failed you.
I’ve learned now that it is impossible to move forward without healing the wounds of our past. So these visions and these feelings were all a manifestation of unresolved potentials, of futures that were never meant for me to experience, but which I was holding hostage in my psyche. I needed to create a ritual to acknowledge them, thank them, and give them permission to go find someone else to live them.
So I kept a record, though it was not a scientific thing, and I sought photo booths to address them. Sometimes I waited, if I knew I would be traveling, to use a photo booth elsewhere that might give me more variety in the style of images. I tried not to overuse a certain machine, and mostly kept things organic; I didn’t want to sanitize the process too much.
Seikaly: This project beautifully subverts ID photos as products of low-key state control. It's also a personal rejection of heteronormativity and performative masculinity. Beyond its immediate and personal impact, what are your thoughts on this project in relation to current cultural/socio-political discussions of surveillance, identity, migration, and otherness?
Soldi: This is actually quite important. The images are passport-sized, and booths were originally conceived for the purpose of creating photo IDs, which were used to catalog society. While the passport quality lends an air of travel, transience, and impermanence, it is also a powerful form of control and surveillance, all of which are elements of the immigration process.
Historically queer bodies have been documented, surveilled, and cataloged as deviant, sick, or odd, often subjected to internment, violence, or death. These images—in their formal elements and in my performative choices—borrow from an aesthetic of criminality and even death portraits, squarely putting a queer body into that context.
Today, as we move into an era of facial recognition, personal data sharing, and the criminalization of asylum, it is important to understand that certain bodies occupy a different space in the state surveillance apparatus. We’re even learning how racial bias in technological developments influences state control mechanisms that disproportionately target people of color.
Seikaly: Has this project enabled the catharsis (grief, mourning) that you hoped for? What futures, personal and creative, are you working toward?
Soldi: More than anything, it has helped me create a language for discussing and addressing an issue that is larger than me. I’ve had an opportunity to speak to many immigrants who describe the very same feelings of emotional displacement and layered relationships to their past and future.
In 2018, with the support of a 4Culture grant, I collaborated with Entre Hermanos, a Seattle-based organization that has been serving the Latinx LGBTQ community since the early 90s, when the AIDS crisis largely ignored the health of communities of color. I worked with Entre Hermanos to invite a small group of 6 male-identifying LGBTQ individuals for a conversation and collaboration. In an intimate and confidential setting, each person shared their story of displacement, how they felt about the lives they left behind, and whether or not they were ready to let go.
Each person shared how they envisioned their future as children in their hometowns, and how they envision it now. We discussed their relationship to those early visions and how they affected each person. Afterward, I invited each person into a photo booth I built. This interaction was private and intimate. I invited each to close their eyes and hold the shutter release as I guided each through a meditation.
At their own pace, each made four self-portraits. I later gave each a copy of their portrait. To me, this was one of the most powerful experiences of this whole process. To have a chance to place my work in the context of a global issue and use it as a way to give others a platform for grieving of their own, thus contributing to a powerful, larger, collective mourning.
Moved to read more about Rafael Soldi and his artistic practice? Check out this piece from a few years back!