A good friend once said that I was an artist by approximation. Both my parents are accomplished artists. At home the list of the family’s priorities always started with Art. Growing up I didn’t think I was very creative. My younger brother and I played a road touring game with small cardboard cars of our own design that we flicked along the lines of a chalk drawn course. For the championship game we set to design a new set of cars. My brothers’ cars were all unique and even multi-layered. In contrast, I thought of an efficient design for a flickable car inspired on the Mach 5 and then mass produced. On the championship game my cars were so far ahead that my brother picked up his cars and left. I had killed the game. I tell this story because I remember how often my calculative ways would be at odds with my developing sense of what I believed about creativity.
I struggled with photography. For a long time I felt that I was far from achieving self expression and caught in a circle of sameness. I was reading book after book and leafing thru picture books, yet no inspiration. I had started to question whether photography was and end on itself or the start of something else.
One of the most meaningful conversations I had with my father was about defining the moment when an artist finds self-expression. I learned from him that any artist will always start with elements of influence that evolve until what is left is something else. There isn’t a set formula of discovery and this process is different for everyone. What is true is that the process will always yield one thing, “the self”. If one does not like the result then one has to change “the self”. This is the road and it could never end in anything different if it is to be authentic.
For years my father challenged me to think about photography like a painter. To think about composition, about form and space, about subject and visual poetry. What I am doing with my images is a few degrees away from photography. I am finding more of a layering feeling in my images. I am also finding more of myself in the work. A self that isn’t static as I continue to learn.
Photo Bio: Learning about photography and the “self” for the past 20 years. Experienced in Travel, Portrait, Studio, Documentary and Urban photography. Experienced in the technical aspects of different formats as well as digital and analog photography. Winner of a top award on the inaugural I-Shot-It black and white competition. One of my photos is published on the inaugural Black and White Street photgraphy book. My portraits of the artist Guillermo Ceniceros are in permanent display at the Guillermo Ceniceros Museum of Modern Art in Durango, Mexico. I have done several photo-mix collaborations with my father Guillermo Ceniceros. More on him here.
While this blog is mainly about my photography, at times I will add stories about experiences that I have found inspiring.
Cheers,
Guillermo
Guillermo Ceniceros Unbound 