In 2010, Frank Blazquez moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico from Chicago, Illinois to start fresh, onward from the drug-enveloped party culture taking over his life. As a certified optician, he landed a job at an optometry office and his path looked up. While he initially connected with a sober crowd, he started spending time in Albuquerque's “War Zone,” – one the most crime-ridden neighborhoods in the city – began selling and taking Oxycontin, and eventually lost his job. This continued until 2016 when he got clean, inspired by fellow addicts failed attempts to break their endless cycles, and the desire to use a camera to tell their – and his own – stories. His experience as an optometrist added a layer of curiosity towards how a lens could reimagine a person’s identity and representation.

Blazquez initially began making portraits of former addicts and formerly incarcerated individuals who called Albuquerque home. His portraits were an attempt to create humanistic counter-narratives of people who popular culture often stereotypes or misrepresents. After sharing a few images on Instagram in 2017, he began receiving requests from a wide swath of people connected by New Mexican Spanish-speaking heritage asking him to make their portrait. His work has since evolved to tell a story of Latinx culture in Albuquerque and other areas in New Mexico.

Documentary portraiture has a complicated history and legacy. It’s often tainted with objectification and outsider views - from Edward Curtis’s early tintypes of Native Americans to National Geographic’s (thankfully now updated) decades of representing indigenous communities through a Western lens. What makes Blazquez’ work stand apart is not only its pronounced humanism but his personal and cultural connection to the people he photographs. He uses photography to describe his shared experience.

Jon Feinstein in conversation with Frank Blazquez