{"id":5525,"date":"2010-06-18T11:57:00","date_gmt":"2010-06-18T11:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lbpost.com\/articles\/life\/flesh-and-bone-photographer-el-imagenero\/"},"modified":"2010-06-18T11:57:00","modified_gmt":"2010-06-18T11:57:00","slug":"flesh-and-bone-photographer-el-imagenero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/hi-lo\/flesh-and-bone-photographer-el-imagenero","title":{"rendered":"Flesh And Bone: Photographer El Imagenero"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Who is the enigmatic artist known as El Imagenero<\/a>? We won’t be answering that question here but, during the course of this interview with the celebrated photographer, we’ll talk about past, process, and even prints. <\/p>\n

Utopia Restaurant<\/a>, located on 1st and Linden in the heart of the East Village Arts District, is hosting a reception tomorrow, Saturday June 19th, from 4-6 PM. Featured will be a new set of images, A Dinner Party, and a book of the complete series. <\/p>\n

We began our discussion with the origins of this new work. <\/p>\n

El<\/strong>: This is actually the first time that I have tried to take an idea from its initial conception, through a plan for what images would express that idea and to the ultimate exhibition and book made from those images. In this case, I was participating in a fine art community where the challenge of doing this very process was thrown out to the members, and this theme was immediately in my mind. <\/p>\n

I think that the phenomenon of various individuals having different expectations, and making different preparations for the same event, from which they take away their own individual perceptions of the events that occurred has long been on my mind. So when this opportunity presented itself, it was fairly easy for me to put together what I wanted to do. <\/p>\n

Sander<\/strong>: So, this was a group of friends, all artists, who gathered together for this dinner party with the intention of turning it into some sort of art making event?<\/em> <\/p>\n

El<\/strong>: Oh no. I was in a class and it was a class assignment to come up with a project. One of my colleagues is working on a portfolio of images of street vendors for example. Another is working on a portfolio of images of California missions new and old, and another is working on bringing inanimate objects to life in her photographs. None of the persons in the photographs in my exhibit are from that group. <\/p>\n

Sander<\/strong>: Oh, ok! I see. So, who are the subjects in the photographs?<\/em> <\/p>\n

El<\/strong>: When I conceived of the project, I put out an open call for models that went to friends on Facebook, people whose e-mail addresses I had at the time and the people I ran into in real-life. The people whom you see in these photographs are the people who responded, and who I thought worked well for the project. At least a couple of the people I had never met before I photographed them for this project. <\/p>\n

Sander<\/strong>: Where did the shoot take place?<\/em> <\/p>\n

El<\/strong>: Actually there were many shoots. The first took place in the Villa Riviera in Long Beach in January 2010, another took place in an apartment in the new high-rises on West Ocean sometime in February 2010. The actual party was held in my apartment in late February 2010. The last session was done in another bedroom in April 2010. <\/p>\n

Sander<\/strong>: Did you bring in a lighting kit?<\/em> <\/p>\n

El<\/strong>: I used different lighting setups for the different shooting situations. For the actual party itself, I used the stands that I normally use to support backdrop papers, stretched over the dinner table, with lights hung from the bar over at the center of the table, with reflectors and modifiers to suit the situation. So if you call that a lighting kit, then I used a lighting kit for that shoot. <\/p>\n

For the others I used existing light in Villa Riviera hallways and the ballroom, Mono lights with soft boxes and umbrellas as needed in the other shoots. So yeah, I carted a lot of equipment to a lot of places. And yes, I made the dinner too. <\/p>\n

Sander<\/strong>: Did you have a specific set of images in mind, and working toward those, or were you exploring each set-up intuitively?<\/em> <\/p>\n

El<\/strong>: Well, once I had the concept in mind, I came up with a work plan that included shapes and colors of the images, and at least some basic images that I wanted to make sure to include. So I made certain that I included those images, but then worked intuitively around them in each shoot. In the end, I got the concept that I wanted but I did not make fine art prints of all of the concept shots I had initially envisioned. The companion book has mostly all of those originally conceived shots, as well as some others. So in other words, I began each session with a shot list, I mostly completed each of the shot lists, but I got a lot more as well. <\/p>\n

Sander<\/strong>: When did you start getting interested in photography?<\/em> <\/p>\n

El<\/strong>: I got my first Nikon when I was 18, as a hand-me-down. It was after that that I began making my own images. I started taking classes sometime after that, and sold my first art print in about 1989. It went up in a hotel in La Jolla. <\/p>\n

Sander<\/strong>: What first attracted you to photography?<\/em> <\/p>\n

El<\/strong>: I think I just liked seeing what people had done when I wasn’t there. I’ve really always been mostly interested in photographs of and about people. In other words, even when there are no humans in the viewfinder, I’m generally more interested in an industrial or urban landscape than a natural landscape. I think people are fascinating. Sometimes they are scary, but often they are beautiful. <\/p>\n

Sander<\/strong>: Do you think that photography can capture a quality of beauty that might otherwise be hidden?<\/em> <\/p>\n

El<\/strong>: Yes, but also other things. In fact, I usually tell people that my work is largely about illustrating or showing or bringing into relief that which is in front of us all the time but which we don’t see as clearly in its full context. <\/p>\n

Sander<\/strong>: How do you think that happens? <\/em> <\/p>\n

El<\/strong>: With respect to humans, I think it is largely because when we look at one another, we see flesh and bone in front of us, but we also see how we feel about that person, how we feel about people like that person and what we expect them to look like. We also look at one another and the world constantly changing positions. So we never see another person in exactly the same position and light for as long as we see that person in that position and light in a photograph. You see, both my engineering and my philosophy education come into play here. <\/p>\n

Sander<\/strong>: How does it feel to see these images, together, up on the walls of Utopia?<\/em> <\/p>\n

El<\/strong>: It is always a little intimidating to put your work up and have other people judge it, but because I hang out there, it’s really interesting to watch people engage in conversations about the images, go up and study the photographs on the wall. <\/p>\n

Sander<\/strong>: Did you gain some new insight into the work after it was up?<\/em> <\/p>\n

El<\/strong>: Oh certainly. Between getting the raw images, of which there were between 1000 and 1500, down to the 18 on the wall, I picked up some themes that I had not previously known about. Seeing them on the wall as a group validated my original conception, but also showed me some things about the project that I had not originally conceived. There’s one very strong theme, for example, about how guests engage one another, that I had not fully appreciated before I saw the finished project. It has to do with blackberries and mobile phones. I mean, we know it happens in real life, and certainly in business meetings, but I didn’t know it was going to happen in the context of a dinner party where people are actually enjoying one another. <\/p>\n

Sander<\/strong>: Experiencing the book must be very different than experiencing the prints, framed, on the wall. How have people responded to the book?<\/em> <\/p>\n

El<\/strong>: Most people don’t see what I see in the book and, in fact, their comments indicate that they don’t agree with one another about what they have seen. <\/p>\n

Obviously people come to the event of reviewing the book the same way they come to all other events in life, including for example, the dinner party. That is, they come with their own experiences, expectations and preparation. I think that those personal factors influence what they see as much, or nearly as much, as the images on the paper. I guess the biggest compliment for me as an artist would be to have people look at an image and see different things, to talk about those things, and each of them open their minds, even a little bit, to the other’s viewpoint.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photographic artist El Imagenero presents his new series, A Dinner Party, at Utopia Restaurant. A reception for the show is taking place on Saturday, June 19th, from 4-6 PM. In this interview, he reveals a bit about his process, and his fascination with photography.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-5525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hi-lo","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5525\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5525"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=5525"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}