*Los Héroes del Brill*o © Federico Estol

Shine Heroes, a three-year project in which photographer Federico Estol worked with Bolivian shoe-shiners, frames resilience to social and economic discrimination as a foundation for solidarity.

Federico Estol’s Los Héroes del Brillo, or “Shine Heroes” encapsulates the artist’s three-year collaboration with Bolivian shoe shiners living in La Paz and El Alto. The multigenerational urban tribe, as Estol describes them, scratches out a living while facing rampant social and economic discrimination. Ski masks, worn to protect their identities from family, friends, and strangers, mark them simultaneously as Other and as members of a marginalized economic class that typifies hustle.

Working with a local NGO that supports shoe shiners through newspaper sales, Estol organized a participatory workshop for shiners to visualize their stories. Drawing on the visual language of comic books and graphic novels, shoe-shiners portrayed themselves as heroes, not outcasts, whose work is both honorable and valuable.

Shine Heroes was recognized as an outstanding series and presented as the Critical Mass 2021 Exhibition at Portland’s Blue Sky Gallery earlier this year. Humble is pleased to highlight Estol as one of our ten standouts from the 2021 Critical Mass Top 50 finalists. See the others as we write about them HERE.

(PS - registration for Critical Mass 2022 opened July 7th! Click here for details on how to submit)

Federico Estol in conversation with Roula Seikaly

PostedJuly 4, 2022

AuthorRoula Seikaly

Categoriesinterviews, Artists, Art News

Tagsphotolucida top 50, photolucida critical mass, Federico Estol, staged photography, documentary photography, collaborative photography, photographer interviews, photolucida2021HAFtop10

Austin, Texas -based photographer Chantal Lesley’s latest project En Medio de la Nostalgia presents a fractured story and asks the question: “What defines a person’s identity when many cultures are involved?”

Chantal Lesley uses self-portraits, staged images, and manipulated family photographs to look at the many layers of family and cultural history. “Is there one that dominates above the rest,” she asks, “or can they all live within someone harmoniously?”

In the project's title photograph "In the Midst of My Nostalgia," for example, Lesley casts herself as the figure in Andrew Wyeth's famous painting "Christina's World," which depicts his polio-stricken neighbor on a Maine landscape - struggling with dignity despite her condition. Where Wyeth's intention was to "do justice to her extraordinary conquest for life," Lesley inserts her own struggle for hope. In place of Wyeth's dreamy field and romantic Maine barn, she casts herself looking at a border wall.

This is just one of many images that create a piecemeal narrative to reflect this in-between state. Each image ultimately ponders the evaporation of ethnic roots can create an isolating and confused sense of self.

I spoke with the artist to learn more about how her process attempts to make sense of this journey.

Jon Feinstein in conversation with Chantal Lesley

PostedJanuary 28, 2022

AuthorJon Feinstein

Categoriesinterviews, Artists, Art News, Portfolio

TagsChantal Lesley, photography and nostalgia, Andrew Wyeth, photography and cultural history, staged photography, photographic tableaux, photographers using Polaroid, photography and identity, art historical references in photography, contemporary photography

“Las Sirenas” september 2020. In memory of Cristina who passed of covid-19 in May 2020, Cypress Atlas poses, recreating the 1984 Sleep It Off album cover by Jean-Paul Goude. set assistance by Morgan Landry. © a.r. havel — “Las Sirenas” september 2020. In memory of Cristina who passed of covid-19 in May 2020, Cypress Atlas poses, recreating the 1984 Sleep It Off album cover by Jean-Paul Goude. set assistance by Morgan Landry.
© a.r. havel

New Orleans-based photographer and set-designer a.r. havel’s work is a kitsch and quarantine-soaked memoir to teenage dreams.

Havel’s references upon references upon references create theatrical transparency in photographic collaboration.

A portrait of a confident young woman poses with a guitar, looking like Liz Phair in a room of candles, chandeliers, and a green plastic almost rave-wear style visor. A re-creation of the cover of no-wave artist Cristina’s 1984 album Sleep It Off becomes a shrine to her after she was taken by Covid earlier this year. A nude male figure reclines across a table, “come-hither”-y gazing at the camera and viewers with a nod to high school painting class – a muse who’s in on the joke. Theatre sets drip with magenta hues.

I met a.r. havel in early December for PhotoNola’s annual portfolio reviews. In our 20-minute art-speed date lightning round, his work stood out for its playful sincerity. “Fascinated by the power of queer and radical community resilience,” his work shows the mechanics behind his process, his deep love for pop-culture and art history, and photography’s ability, during these uncertain times, to be both cathartic and fun.

Jon Feinstein in conversation with a.r. havel

PostedDecember 30, 2020

AuthorJon Feinstein

CategoriesArtists

TagsAaron Richmond-Havel, New Orleans photographers, New Orleans Artists, NOLA Artists, NOLA Photographers, Performance art and photography, art during Covid19, staged photography, contemporary portraiture, photographic tableaux, kitsch in photography, Liz Phair

Since the early 2000’s, Adam Ekberg has been making photographic spectacles that play on, and sometimes poke fun at the trial and error of the scientific method. Engaging milk cartons, paper airplanes, beer bottles, and dominoes with mirrors, flashlights, prisms, and other science-fair ephemera, his photographs depict highly controlled, yet seemingly pointless experiments that make science and fantasy seem easy, approachable, and even humorous. Sometimes spending days at a time staging a single still life – for example, an image of milk spilling seamlessly from carton to carton – until he gets it right, Ekberg’s pictures, unaided by digital manipulation, recall childhood playfulness and present an optimistic view of the often overlooked. Unlike the heavy, cinematic tableaus of Gregory Crewdson and Jeff Wall, his lighthearted theatrics, though precise and intentioned, wears its self consciousness on his sleeves. I caught up with Adam after his recent solo exhibition at Seattle’s Platform Gallery, to learn more about his process and ideas, and his recent monograph The Life of Small Things.

PostedMay 19, 2016

AuthorJon Feinstein

CategoriesArtists, Portfolio

TagsAdam Ekberg, performance art, science fiction, science fair, staged photography, new photography, photography as performance

Heroic Photographs of Bolivian Shoe Shiners in La Paz and El Alto

A Photographer Contemplates Her Family's Cross-Cultural History "In The Midst of Nostalgia"

A Colorful Theater of the Absurd

Adam Ekberg: Interrupting the Elements