This week the AFI (Archivo Fotografico Indigena) came back from a 3 week summer vacation and they have hit the ground running making final preparations for a project they are participating in commissioned by Museo de Mujeres Artistas Méxicanas about diverse experiences of migracion. 5 women associated with AFI have been invited to develop new photographic work responding to the theme of migration as they experience it in their lives and communities. The curator of this exhibition will visit San Cristobal next week to begin the process of curating works made by the AFI photographers.
When I arrived in Chiapas several of the women had already made a body of work for this project, but several others were having difficulty making the images they wanted on the film cameras AFI has. AFI and the Chiapas Indigenous Photography Project have, to date, mainly used film in their work, although they do have a box of old digital cameras that they have acquired over the years. Looking at these cameras (see below) was a sobering reminder of how rapidly digital technology becomes obsolete – some of these cameras were 1.2 megapixels, and none were over 3.2 megapixels… I sadly had to inform everyone that these cameras are just not up to the job of making the kind of art photographs that the project is aspiring to.
This old collection of digi cams also highlights some of the challenges regarding the ongoing resourcing of a community photography project – how do you afford to have up to date digital equipment? And going digital means more than just cameras – one of the AFI computers is on the blink so we have to download to my laptop… If anyone is interested in making a donation to the project to support the purchase of some digital equipment of a quality worthy of the work being made here contact me and I’ll happily help bring AFI into the digital age!
AFI collection of old digi cams
Despite all of these challenges, one of the things I have been asked to help with during my visit is to provide some training in digital photography, and the Migration project seemed like a good way to get started. So over the vacation period several of the AFI photographers and I have been working together to learn about digital photography and what digital cameras can do more easily than film – shooting in low light for example.
Learning about digital photography in my courtyard
With the loan of one of my old digital SLRs ( a beautiful and far from obsolete Nikon D70) the work of several of the women has progressed a pace over the past weeks, and hopefully the results will make their way into the public over time.
Check out the website of Museo de Mujeres Artistas Méxicanas who will be featuring the Migration project later this year (it aims to include photographic work from Indigenous women who have migrated to the USA as well as some from here in Chiapas) – the site and online gallery is an interesting little window into whats going on in contemporary art made by women here in Mexico, including performance, installation and video to name just a few things you can look at there. They also have a good links page thats worth exploring.