Ep 032: Juan Brenner
A SHOT: To start, can you describe the photo that we’re going to talk about?
JUAN BRENNER: Sure. What we’re seeing, it’s what’s called a Holy Week arch. It’s an arch a family would construct in front of their house, and that arch has offerings to God. Holy Week, it’s the most important time of year for the Catholic religion in Guatemala, and a big chunk of the country is Catholic. So there are many things that happen during Holy Week, many rituals. Most of these things that happen during Holy Week are syncretic, which is the mix of Catholic religion with the local religions, pre-Columbian deities, pre-Columbian pantheons.
Going back to the image, each Holy Week you can build this arch in front of your house and adorn it with flowers, adorn it with fruit — fruit is really important — adorn it with palm leaves, and adorn it with many fragrant flowers and fragrant seeds and fragrant leaves. The idea is that everyone is going to walk under this and see the fruit and be part of the ritual. This comes from the Mayan cosmovision: When you go through a door, you go through a cycle. You leave everything behind. And this is kind of the meaning. There’s a lot more. There’s many layers of information here. But just for starters, that’s what we’re seeing.
This iteration of the Holy Week arch has very elongated, very long vertical posts. Usually the posts end, say, 40 centimeters after the horizontal post, like a really simple three-piece arch. But these verticals go up very long, and that’s not normal. And on top of each post, there’s an American flag. That’s basically what we’re seeing. This is in Santa Maria Ixtahuacán, which is a very small town in the Guatemalan Highlands, small but very important in terms of location and in terms of the area, in terms of the territory.
When was this photo taken?
I took this image in 2022.
We can think in broad strokes here, but how do you end up with a photo like this?
Most of the work I’ve been doing for the last five years revolves around the road trip, like a road-trip kind of adventure. I cover a lot of terrain driving, and I move from town to town, driving. Me and my team were driving on the road, and all I could see behind this mountain was the two tips of the arch with the American flags. It kind of sucked that I could not shoot that picture. It was impossible to shoot because I saw it from the road, and it’s a busy road, so it was dangerous to stop and shoot that image. I was not going to be able to get it, but I saw the little tips with the American flags, so I had to find my way around the town, just moving around, and I found three or four different arches in that town but not that one. I had to drive around for a good 20–25 minutes. Finally we saw it, and we had to park the car and walk, let’s say, 800 meters to get to where the arch was.
If taking pictures was the intention of the day, what do you find yourself looking for when you’re out making pictures?
I feel like my work is divided in two big worlds. All these projects I’m shooting right now and what I’ve done in the last five years is divided into landscape and portrait. So when I’m on the road, actually I don’t have my mind set on humans. I don’t have my mind set on shooting people, which is what I enjoy the most. I’m set on seeing something that calls my attention and that I’m curious about, so it’s a lot of driving and looking at something and being like, “Oh, my god, that looks really cool!” Driving for a few more hundred meters, turning around and turning around again, getting to the same spot, parking the car and just getting out of the car, walking around, looking for my angle. Maybe what I saw I saw it really fast just passing by because we’re driving, so just turning around, stopping the car, getting out of the car by myself, it helps me understand what I’m doing. If the shot is do-able, I’ll do it. If it’s not, I’ll get back in the car and keep moving. I’m not looking for anything specific, but I know the territory, and I know the area. It’s so crazy, and there’s so many things happening that I have to be really aware and alert because I don’t want to lose opportunities. It’s just me being aware. And what I’m finding is it’s sometimes accidents, just things that are weird, out-of-place things that I think are interesting.
So then what distinguishes this here from something that you might just see and pass by and not take a picture of?
The American flag. I think the American flag is key. So what made it different? I’ve seen a million of those arches, but I’ve never seen one with verticals so long that it almost looks like an American football… How do you call it?
Uprights.
Uprights. It looks just like that. And on top of that you have the American flags up there. If you came to the Guatemalan Highlands, you will see the American flags repeatedly. You will see it many times a day, but I’ve never seen it like that. I’m used to the hybridization of cultures, and I’m used to bumping into situations that blow your mind, but this one is so subtle, and it’s all about the American flags.
We’ll dive into that a bit later, but I want to go into a bit more on your day of taking pictures. So if taking pictures is the intention of the day, how do you prepare? What is your morning like? How do you get yourself into the mindset of finding something like this?
Something important to define is that I shoot a lot. Maybe prolific is the word. I shoot a lot. And I’m shooting many projects at the same time. And I just feel which one needs more attention at that moment, and my gut will tell me where to dive completely. In order for me to be able to shoot that much, I need a team. It’s not just me. The first project I shot after I retired from photography and came back — my first book, Tonatiuh — I shot half of that by myself, and I realized I was making a huge mistake for many reasons: technical, safety... It just didn’t make sense. I was so focused on making something mine at that point, and I thought traveling by myself was a good idea, and it wasn’t. So then I started working with someone who would be able to drive while I was in the passenger seat. When I’m driving, I have to pay attention to the road, and I know that I’m missing so many things, so having someone driving for me was amazing. It just changed the whole dynamics, and then after that, I thought, “OK, but what if I want to shoot more? What if I want to do more?” I realized that I needed more people on my team. So now my ideal team: It’s a driver, a fixer and a photo assistant. That’s my ideal team. Every time I work in the Guatemalan Highlands, at least, that’s my team.
So what’s a day of shooting? Getting up extremely early in the morning around 3:30–4 [a.m.] because we know we have to drive three or four hours to get to the next town. I really love when I experience the sunrise on the road. It’s so cool. It’s one of those feelings, you’re just filled up with energy. It’s almost magical. I really like that. We get up early. We get in the car. We just start driving. We know where we’re getting to, but I almost never set up a time frame. I just don’t know where I’m gonna get then. It could be five, six, seven, eight, 10, 12 hours. I don’t care. It’s a matter of what I find on the road, and maybe I decide to go into this little town because I want to see something there. The driver is usually another photo assistant, so I travel with two photo assistants, and one of them drives.
Then I travel with this fixer, and this comes from the experience of shooting Tonatiuh, my first book — me by myself trying to communicate with people in the Highlands. The language is a barrier. There’s 28 languages spoken in Guatemala, and I don’t speak any of those, just Spanish and English, which is a shame that everyone doesn’t speak at least one Mayan language. Also, I realized that my codes of communication were completely different than the ones in the Highlands and the ones especially in the smaller communities. So I needed someone who, first of all, spoke the language and was part of the community, was someone they know, someone respected, and that’s the kind of people I look for as fixers. I have many fixers in different parts of the Guatemalan Highlands, and they travel with me. We usually meet at some point in the mountains, and they join the team there, and then we keep going. We keep working. That’s basically what it is: Me looking around, saying, “I like that,” and then when we get out of the car, it’s not just me. It’s more people. Even though it’s complex, I love the fact that we’re a team. It’s just really fun.
Do you feel like you see things that you wouldn’t because of that collaborative element?
Definitely. And usually from point A to B, I have 10 or 12 different spots that I already know. I’ve been researching, and I know that there’s a church in this little town that was founded by this conquistador, this Spaniard guy, that I’m working around, that it’s important. So then I’m gonna go to that town even though maybe I have to drive one or two hours away from the main road I was going from point A to point B. I know places where I want to go to. I’ve spoken to the fixer. The fixer tells me, “I researched, and I found these four spots that you might be interested in because A, B, C, D happened here.” So it’s a lot of that communication with the fixer and me researching and me already being in communication with locals. The locals know that I’m going to get there. It’s not all about the road trip. The road trip gives me the energy, and I love that, but it keeps getting more deep and deep.
I would imagine that it also has an effect of authority too. So much of your energy was probably spent in the previous project convincing people that you were OK, and it’s not so much that you need to worry about that now because there is the 1) body of work that you have behind you, but also that “I have a team with me. We’re making something.” It’s very clear. It’s not just a student with a camera or something like that.
Yeah, but you know, it’s complex. It’s a double-edged sword because sometimes people react better to a more intimate situation. Shooting pictures in the Guatemalan Highlands, it’s very complex. It’s very dangerous for many reasons. First of all, the territory and the people in the territory have been under a very chaotic and complex colonial process for the last 500 years and before that wars. Pre-Columbian empires had many wars around that territory. It’s always been under heat, so people there, they don’t trust anyone. And in the last hundred years, Guatemala has had a very complex… I’ve said the word complex so many time, but it is what it is. We’ve had a hard last hundred years, and on top of that, we had 36 years of war, internal war. So people don’t trust anyone. And then after that if you add that one of the top five incomes in Guatemala is tourism, then you have a lot of tourists that flock to the area because it’s so beautiful. So imagine, for me, I am a Guatemalan. I was born and raised in Guatemala City. It’s so complex for me to communicate there. Just imagine how much more difficult it is for a tourist to communicate with a local. And on top of that, these are warriors, man. These people are descendants of warriors, most of them. It’s a reality. So they’re really feisty. They’re really fiery. They have to defend themselves. They’re always in a defensive stance. So it’s complex. Having a fixer, it’s key in order to understand the codes because each little town has different codes. It’s a fractal kind of situation.
For this picture specifically, how quickly do you take this photo?
OK, let’s say I saw the image I wanted to take. It took me 30 minutes to find that specific arch because we’ll see something at a distance and be like, “Oh, there it is!” We will get there, and it’s not the arch. It’s a different arch. Then I found it, and it was right in front of someone’s house, so I was a little bit worried about that. We had to go knock on the door. We spoke to them, and you have to wait a little bit for them to tell you if they are into it or not. We talked to this 17-year-old kid. I have a portrait of this kid in my book, too, because he was amazing. So he kind of became a little fixer right there. He went up, spoke to his parents. His parents came out. We spoke to them. And then I was able to shoot. I shot that in a minute, two minutes. I just framed it, saw that frame, and I’m like, “Whoa! Here we go!” I think I shot two or three images. I usually do three images of each thing I shoot.
What’s an example of a choice or decision you made when composing the photograph?
I feel like I always end up shooting the first composition I frame, and there’s this thing that’s really important. I have a really bad back. I have two herniated disks. I basically couldn’t walk for, like, four or five months after I got this procedure done in my back. And I really needed to get back to shooting. I was in the middle of shooting Genesis, the project that image belongs to. That’s where I understood the importance of having an assistant with me at all times because I work with a Mamiya RZ67, and I have the viewfinder. I have the winder. I have the L grip. It’s like 18 pounds. That ruined my back. That’s the reason why my back is destroyed. So now I cannot carry the camera. Now my assistant has to hold the camera from the strap, and then I just float the camera around. So that makes it harder for me to move around. This is harder than a tripod. There’s someone that has to move with you. I tend to get to the location, look at what I have in front of me and just walk around without the camera. I know my lens really well. I only work with one lens. Actually 95 percent of my images are made with the same lens. So I know my lens really well. So I kind of go around, and then I go, like, “OK, let me try here.” And they bring the camera. I start framing, moving everything a little bit around, and I go, “OK, let’s do it.” Boom, boom. And that’s it. I’m not gonna go look for another angle. I might not do that. I tend not to do that.
You mentioned that you spoke to the family that lived in the house beforehand. What did you learn from them? Like, did you talk to them to try to find out context of this?
Well, no, we all knew. This is something you see in Guatemala all the time. So I knew what I was looking at. I knew exactly what it was. It was more a matter of I don’t like to invade people’s private spaces. It’s easy to get into someone’s space without even noticing. And people tend to be really protective of their space. I knew that arch was made by the family who lived in that house because that’s how it goes. You build your arch right in front of your house. We were gonna be there for a few minutes. It was four or five of us. So I didn’t just want to be shooting pictures, and then the owners of the house would realize their house it’s right in front of my lens. And then people will come out and will ask what I’m doing. So I try to do it the other way, just tell people what I’m doing first and actually ask them if they’re OK with me being there. Me being there, it’s invasive. Definitely it is invasive.
Usually I will talk to people without a camera first. I would just chat with people for a while. This was amazing because we shot the image, and then we got invited to the house, and then we were fed in that house. And then I shot an amazing portrait of Esquipulas, the kid that we started the conversation with. We had atole, which is an indigenous drink made out of corn masa. We had that. We had Holy Week bread. It’s bread that’s specifically done for the Holy Week. We chatted there. We stayed there for an hour after I shot the image. Actually this is funny because they brought their grandmother to me because I was taking pictures, and they were like, “Oh, let’s go get grandma so we get a picture of grandma taken.” So I took a picture of the whole family and stayed in contact with this kid, and I sent the pictures through WhatsApp or something.
I think what I was wondering was more the context of the differences here, the longer poles and the American flags on top. Did you talk to them about that?
Yeah, I did. I mean, it was evident for me. I saw that, and I know what’s going on here. And what’s going on here is that someone who migrated to the United States of America from this family paid for this. That’s what’s going on here. That’s exactly what’s going on here. I asked them. I talked to them about it. I knew it, but you have to do the research, and I had to make sure that it was like that, and it was like that.
OK, something that is really important in this body of work — it’s called Genesis — one of the main pillars of this body of work is opulence. Here’s a conversation of priorities. A few years ago everything was about priorities. We were in the middle of war. People were really poor. More than 60 percent of the country didn’t know how to read at some point; I think it was the ’70s, the ’80s. This is a little bit of context of what was going on. This is something that the inhabitants of the Highlands have been doing for centuries, these arches. So it’s known that only rich people can do it. Only rich people could have an arch because it’s about priorities. This is a lot of money. You’re buying fruit. You’re buying wood. You’re painting it. You’re buying paint. So only rich people would have an arch. Or a bunch of families will get together and tip in tiny chunks of money. It’s a ritual. It’s a blessing. You’re offering this to A) God, definitely, and B) nature. Talk about syncretic stuff, you know? Catholic is God. Syncretic is nature. So it’s a body of work that speaks about opulence. It’s a body of work that speaks about the new generation and the new way things are happening in the Highlands, and migration is a huge aspect of this conversation.
If this structure is essentially the dominant subject in the photo, what can we learn from the other details that surround it?
First of all, you see this beautiful mountain behind the main subject. This image has many of those ingredients about my work that makes it my work. First of all is the mountains. I’m obsessed with the energy that comes out of these mountains. It’s palpable. You can feel it. You can see it. Once you’re here, you’ll understand exactly what I’m talking about because everything is surrounded by beautiful mountains. The beauty of the landscape is extremely important, but more important is how this beautiful natural landscape is in a very weird and complicated synergy with the new ideas of progress — in this case, building stuff. In this case, building houses.
Another thing you can see in this image is that the house that is right behind the arch, it’s a vernacular interpretation of Guatemalan architecture in the Highlands. It’s very old school. It’s old. The bricks are made out of mud. The bricks are adobe bricks. And then you see that house that’s right behind that; it’s a more contemporary interpretation of architecture made out of cinderblock. So there are two things that are really important here. When you are poor, you would only be able to do adobe. But if you have more money, if you’re opulent, you’re able to do cinderblock. Just right there you have two completely different interpretations of class, of this new bourgeois that’s happening — excuse my French — but this new thing that is happening. Opulence definitely because it’s expensive to do this.
Immigration is another topic that my work revolves around very much because money sent from the United States by immigrants is the most important income in Guatemala. More than coffee. More than sugar cane. And more than banana. And by the way, “banana republic” is a term invented to name Guatemala, invented to describe what happened in Guatemala in the ’50s and ’60s. Fruit, coffee was the most important part of our economics. But now it’s money sent from the States. And that is one conversation that is very key in my work because money sent from the States is reshaping the Highlands in ways that are complex to understand, but you have it right there.
If you went back in time and showed this photograph to someone from this town 20 years ago, what might they recognize and what might they not recognize?
I think they would be really impressed by the amount of construction there is on that little valley right there because I remember many years ago this town was tiny, and that mountain was totally covered with trees. You can start seeing that the mountain is being eaten on the left side, that the woods are being eaten by, well, by people, by the idea of progress. One of the main ideas of progress is cinderblock. One of the main ideas of progress is having two, three, four, five stories on your house. If someone from this town saw this image 20 years ago, 20 years ago we didn’t have cell phones. That’s the most important thing. There were no pictures being taken. Now, Guatemala is the second country in Latin America with the most cell phones per capita. That means there’s more cell phones than people in Guatemala. That means everyone wherever you go has a smartphone. So 20 years ago, pre–smartphones someone would not understand the amount of construction there is there. I think the idea of the American flag 20 years ago was really different. It still was an idea of progress, too, being able to be there, being able to have dollars, being able to consume. That’s one of the main things that people who go to the States from these communities will talk about: the amount of choices you have. The amount of different shoes you can buy. The amount of different… And that happens also to me. I see myself reflected in that. Like, every time I go to Whole Foods, it’s ridiculous. How many different kinds of oat milk do you need? So that’s something that impresses people a lot. That impresses me. They would also be mesmerized by the amount of money that was spent on this because 20 years ago the situation was completely different. Twenty years ago, it was what, 2004, right? Twenty years ago, this town was in the middle of let’s say a really hot territory when it came about the war. So 20 years ago, the war ended 10 year before that; the war ended 30 years ago. So the idea of opulence, the idea of priorities, they would not believe what they’re looking at. Actually let me say something, if we can change that. It’s difficult for me to think what people will think, and sometimes it’s kind of weird to say that. But that’s how I feel. I feel like the amount of progress you see in this image would impress anyone that saw this image 20 years ago, anyone in the country.
I was thinking about the photo concept of windows and mirrors with regard to your work, where some photos are windows that look out on the world, and some photos are mirror that reflect back on the artist. And then there’s the idea that many photographers work from today that a window, depending on how light hits the glass, can also reflect back so that sometimes a window into the world can also reflect the photographer. I think on a very surface level here, it’s clear that this photo is a window, that the perspective is looking out on the world, but how might it also be a mirror?
My work tries to find the place where tradition, culture and technology meet. I think this image speaks about ritual, tradition, identity. Everyone who inhabits the Highlands, basically the locals, will see this image and feel really comfortable. It’s a hopeful image. People in the town might see this and go, “Oh, wow, I wish I had the amount of money this family has to be able to do this.” And they all know how this was made. It’s an image that also is impressive for the, let’s say, Western eye or the eye that’s not trained to see all these things, which is my eye. I am not trained. I am not from there. I don’t belong. So that is also important. I’m in this position, and that position is never going to change because let’s talk about something that’s really complex, and it’s the fact that me walking around with a huge robot of a camera, it’s a pretty colonialist stance. Let’s start with that. And I try for my work to be the complete opposite. If you see this image, this image is a conversation on post-colonialism and imperialism, too. This is both an image that is very normal and quotidian for people, but also you look up, and you’ll be like, “Oh, wow, I have a lot family that’s in the States. I wanna go to the States. I will go to the States.” I was in the States for a long time, and I made money. It’s all about that.
Do you feel like there’s a reflection of you in this photo?
Definitely, yeah, completely. I tend to gravitate to images that I feel a part of because I also migrated when I was really young. Just so you know my story: I started shooting here. I started shooting portraits in Guatemala City in the late ’90s. Imagine Guatemala without Internet, dude. It was crazy. It was insane. So I was shooting. I realized that my pictures sucked, that I was not that good, but people would tell me that I was good. And I’m like, “Those people don’t know,” because I knew I had to be better, so I knew I had to go somewhere. New York was the first place. I could go there because I had a tourist visa, so without knowing and without really thinking about it, I moved out of Guatemala in 1998. And I spent more than a decade in New York, so I was an immigrant. And even though I’m an atheist, I’m obsessed with religion, and I’m obsessed with all these syncretic symbols of ritual, of fervor, of love to something, and then opulence.
So you left Guatemala to be a photographer in New York, and then you came back after more than a decade there. I’m wondering if there’s a way to talk about this photo with regard to the act of returning.
Yeah, I went to New York, and I became a fashion photographer. Each decision that I made at that time, at that cycle in my life, just brought me farther away from Guatemala, both geographically and conceptually. All I wanted was to get out of here. Small-town syndrome. You just wanna get out of there because you hate it. You hate everyone. You don’t feel like you belong. You don’t understand. The war was really important in our upbringing, and I moved away from Guatemala four years after the war ended. It was a horrible time to be here. It was extremely dangerous to be in Guatemala. There were hundreds of people getting kidnapped a month. It was horrible. I just wanted to get out of there. Also add to that that I have this inclination for partying. I was partying way too much here. I’ve always had alcohol and drug problems since I started consuming when I was, like, 12. So it was a nightmare. I was living a nightmare when I left. And then, I made my life a nightmare in New York because of the same reasons: partying, drugs, all those things. It was really traumatic because I had to come back to Guatemala in order to do rehab and get away from the situations that were killing me basically. So I find myself in a country that I don’t recognize because I left when I was 19. Let’s say I became a man. I became an artist. I became a person. I became a human. I became a photographer. I became everything in New York.
When I come back, I’m a complete stranger. I’m a complete foreigner — that’s the word, foreigner — here because my idols are the big masters of the large format: Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Javier Vallhonrat, Gursky, that whole German photography crowd. Those were my idols, and I come back, and I couldn’t click for many years. When I came back to Guatemala, I didn’t shoot for five or six years because I knew I wasn’t going to be able to be a fashion photographer down here. I knew that was gonna destroy me. But then after five years, I started looking at things in a different way, and I started feeling more empowered. Like, I trusted myself more because I knew the amount of energy, love, money, hours you have to dedicate to a project in order for this project to make sense and be successful. So I knew it, and for years I was stopping myself from doing it because I have a bread and butter. I have a 9 to 5. It’s very hard to mix a 9 to 5 with personal projects like this that take so much from you. And it took five years of my life.
Do you feel like you needed to leave and come back home to find something like this interesting, this photo specifically?
I’m not gonna lie to you. I didn’t want to come back home. That wasn’t in my plans. Once I left Guatemala, I thought I’m like, “Fuck you. I’m gone.” I wanna close all the doors. I don’t even wanna close doors; I want to freaking burn the doors. I left my family. I never wanted to come back. I never wanted to, but I had to. I would lie to you if I told you, “Yeah, I came back because I wanted to.” No, I came back because I wanted to save my life. And then I realized that I made a huge decision moving back, and I realized that I was not gonna have a career here. And that was so hard. I left my career. It was my fault. I screwed it up. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. It was my fault.
You know what I learned in all this time? I learned ethics. I learned the codes. I learned English. I learned how to write an e-mail. I learned how to speak about my work in a way people would understand. I learned all the technicalities that make you a professional artist. Everything I learned in the fashion world, I applied to this new… Just because we have to name it, let’s say “documentary” because I’m not a documentary photographer. But let’s say it’s more social documentary, more real-life type of work I’m doing right now. And that was so hard. The main answer, it’s no, man. I didn’t come back searching for this. I found it later, and it saved my life. But I didn’t know I was gonna bump into stuff like this. I didn’t.
Would you have found a photo like this interesting when you 19 moving to New York?
No, and this is just talking about me at this specific point in my life. I was obsessed with portraits. And this is really funny because I came back… So I retired from photography for a while. I don’t shoot. And then I start thinking about this, and I make my first project Tonatiuh, my first book. I didn’t wanna shoot portraits on that book because what happens is I’m in New York for more than a decade shooting only fashion. That’s the only thing I knew how to do, so I wanted to shy away from that and stay away from the space where I feel comfortable. I wanted to get out of there. I never shot landscapes before. Never. And I left Guatemala with a fuck-you attitude swearing I was never ever going to shoot mountains, rivers or indigenous people smiling because that was what made me nauseous about this tourist-porn photography that defines Guatemala and a lot of the Latin American photography scene. I hated that. And then I come back, and look at me. So in that first project I didn’t want to shoot any portraits because 1) I wanted to do something that was different, and 2) it’s very difficult to shoot pictures in the Guatemalan Highlands. To shoot portraits in the Guatemalan Highlands, you can get killed if you don’t know what you’re doing. But I started shooting landscapes. I started shooting little accidents, what I call B-sides. I call it B-sides because it’s not your usual shot. And Guatemala is a completely B-side kind of country. We might not be the main, like Mexico is A-side. Guatemala is B-side, but we’re cooler.
Do you feel like a photo like this requires or deserves context? Like, is it necessary to be able to explain it?
No, you look at it, and you know this is something that’s not a usual thing that’s there all the time. Look at the landscape. If you can erase the main subject, the arch, for a few seconds, look at the landscape. This is completely out of the normality to have that thing there. And that’s there only at this specific time of the year. People don’t know that, but you look at it, and I think there’s this temporality to the main subject, like you look at that, and you know that it’s an ornament. And of course, look at this ornament with American flags. It’s an out-of-place thing, and that’s the most important thing about the image. How do you feel about it? Did you need context when you saw the image for the first time?
I think that the image became richer when I started reading more about your projects and understanding them. It would be easy to pass by this and say, “Oh, that’s interesting,” and I also wonder if it would be easy to misinterpret as well. I was wondering how much do you worry about reinforcing a viewers misperception of the world here. Like, I think there are a lot of people who could look at a photo like this and just think, “Oh, look at these poor people who worship America.” Is there an idea of having to find that balance?
It’s really funny, yeah. Let’s analyze that. First thing, man, that’s one of the main messages. It looks poor because your conceptions of richness and your conceptions of opulence and the conceptions of what makes someone rich are extremely different than the reality here. These people, they’re not poor. The fact that there’s a house back there with two stories… The gray house, it’s painted. You don’t see the cinderblock. The fact that they have this coating over the cinderblock, that’s money. So having that house made out of cinderblock, they’re rich. Compared to someone that lives in, let’s say, the United States and lives in a $500,000; $700,000 house; $1 million house, if we compare it to that, these two situations don't exist in the same world. This is a parallel world. So that’s the most important thing about this. They do worship America. That’s the thing. You got it right because if you put a flag so high up it’s because you want everyone to see it. You’re proud of it. So you almost got it. It’s just the fact that no, they’re rich. They’re not poor at all. They’re rich. Yeah, it’s complex because people need to either hear me talking or read something about the work to completely understand it, but there are images like this that are just so out of place. You’re used to seeing the arches. Those arches are everywhere. I’ve been looking at those arches for forever. And this is an offering. It’s the mixture of Catholic because it’s done in Holy Week. It’s the week that precedes Easter Sunday. It’s the most important moment of the year for the Catholic religion. I’ve seen this everywhere, but the fact that it’s so long and so tall with the flags and that it looks like an American football goal thing, it’s something that made me extremely excited and interested about who these people were. Then I met the family. And you don’t see that in the image. But I do think it’s not needed.
Let’s talk about that. There are no people in this photo, but there’s evidence of people. So what does the absence or maybe implied presence of people give to this photo? What does it add to this that there are no people here?
I think the drying rack, the drying line, of clothes back there. I clearly remember looking at this image and saying “Oh, my god, this is perfect. This is a banger.” And boom, boom, boom, shot the image. Then I get the film back, and I’m like, “Oh, my god, this is a banger.” And then I scan the image, and I blew it up big, and I saw the clothing line. I’ve never seen it. I didn’t see the clothing line. But it’s such a coincidence that it’s framed right there, right in the middle. It’s almost like I wanted to do that, and I would lie if I told you [that]. There are those little details when you are in the field shooting pictures and when you have pressure — pressure of time, pressure of moving around fast, we might not be welcome here, I don’t feel welcome here, all those things — it’s hard to concentrate on the image. This image, it’s pompous. It’s opulent. It’s big. I’m looking up. But then the clothes there are like, “OK, we’re in a neighborhood.” This is a hood. There’s people here who are drying their clothes. So I think it’s a good mix.
I’ve read you refer to your work as akin to that of an archivist. Thinking about that then, what is your responsibility in possessing a photo like this?
I feel like an archivist on this body of work, this project only. My other projects are completely different. And the reason why I feel like an archivist on this project, it’s because I just became liquid and kind of tried to move and be liquid through those cracks and through those roads that the Highlands would take me. I shot more than 300 rolls. The book is so dense that it’s impossible to see it and understand it in one take. But that’s exactly what happens in the Highlands. It’s impossible to understand it in one trip. The book is big. The book is thick. It has a lot of images, so it’s an archive. It is divided into chapters. It does have a sequence. But I was not that worried about the way one image takes you to the other.
Do you feel any responsibility to the family that lived there?
Oh, of course. A huge one. This is a conversation that keeps coming back: Me taking pictures, I’m taking pictures. What am I giving back? And sometimes it’s impossible to give pictures back. I usually give them printed images, the printed images of my contact with them. Sometimes I give them other images that are not in the book. I feel like I’ve become good at reading what’s a better situation, if me giving you a few prints is better. And sometimes I have those prints framed already because I don’t want to give them the burdon of buying frames for these pictures. I either give them those pictures framed because I think it’s going to be better than just giving them this book. Understanding what comes behind making a book, it’s hard for me to understand sometimes, and I think sometimes it’s a little bit violent and abrupt to just give people a book. They’re not going to feel like they belong. So I have to read the situation. Sometimes people get books. Sometimes people get prints. And sometimes I meet someone for seven, eight minutes, I take a portrait of them, and they don’t want to give me their info. They don’t want to give me their contact because it’s not safe in Guatemala. So I’m never ever going to see this person again. It’s a matter of the situation.
I guess there would be that distinction of giving someone the book can almost make them feel like they’re now on display, whereas giving someone a framed print is more like honoring them in some way.
Yeah, there you go. But everyone I shoot with, everyone who’s in my images, everyone knows I’m shooting a book. It’s very important for me because there’s also a conversation of rights, income. There are people that are like, “Oh, but you’re going to make money with that book. What do I get?” And I’m like, “Nothing. Sorry, you get nothing. I’m so sorry.” And this is part of my job, to make people understand that making books is the worst economic financial decision someone can make. Making photo books, it’s a really bad financial decision. People sometimes think that you become rich by doing this type of work. And no. And then people ask me, “Why do you do books?” I understood how to make them. I think I’m good at it, and I think I have stuff to say that can only be said in a book format. When you see my portraits, I feel like I’m really trying and I work really hard for it to be understood right away that those people want to be there. One of the most important things for me, man, is glorifying brown skin. The glorification of brown skin, it’s extremely important for me. And you can see it in the portraits. You can see that those people are empowered. They wanna be there. They wanna be part of the project.
What do you think we can learn about you from the choices that you’ve made with this photo?
For me, it’s been really hard to understand and accept that I will never belong. This is my territory. My mother was born in the Highlands, in one of the main towns up there. Both my parents were not from the city. There’s a big huge disconnection between the city and the towns in the Highlands, and that disconnection, it used to be really bad for the people in the Highlands because they were always behind in terms of technology, communication. But now with smartphones and Internet, people don’t need the city anymore to be in tune and to be able to be in an intelligible conversation with the rest of the world. They don’t need the city. For me, it’s extremely important to show this parallel world, and I want people to understand that I am discovering… Discovering is a complex word. But discovering for me. I’m learning all the time. I’m bumping into new things. So I want people to know that I’m just being a tool, man. Those images are there. I didn’t come up with the images. What I’m shooting is right there, and I’m just capturing it. Some people are extremely protective of their environment and communities. Some people don’t know that, first of all, I’m brown. I know I have a German last name, but no, I have Mayan blood, a lot of it, in my veins. I don’t belong. I’m just capturing what’s there. In this project, I’m just an archivist. You know how it felt? It felt like you remember that show where you would be left in a supermarket with a pushing cart, and you would just put whatever you could in that? That’s exactly how I feel with this project. It was like that.
Maybe if you want to you can talk a little bit more about that idea of belonging here, and the idea that your ancestors are from here but you aren’t.
I’m in the middle of a really weird situation where the indigenous radicalists think I’m white, or they think I don’t belong, or some people might think that I’m culturally appropriating stuff. And then I have another world where white Western people that speak English look at me and they see that I’m brown, and they might think I belong. They might think I’m part of that. It’s a huge responsibility because I’m putting images out there that have never been seen about Guatemala. I know it. I know this. I’m the first photographer in Guatemala doing this kind of work in Guatemala. It’s a huge responsibility. But with each project and with each interview, with each feature, with each time I can go through the body of work, I feel more comfortable saying that I don’t belong because I do feel a little bit like I do belong. Don’t kill me for this! I’m the one doing the work. I’m the one covering the kilometers. I’m the one doing it. I gotta feel a little bit of that belonging when it’s extremely complex, especially in the moment we are in right now. We have this kind of magical aura around indigenous [people] and rituals. It became a part of contemporary art in a really strong way, and there are Guatemalan contemporary artist that are extremely important in that movement. And I’m not part of that movement. I am not. All I’m saying, it just revolves around me understanding that I am mesitzo. Mestizo is the mix of European and indigenous blood anywhere in the world. I am mestizo, and this is mestizo work. This is not white person work. This is not indigenous-person work. This is metizo. I’m a hybrid, and this work is a hybrid.
Interviewed on December 18, 2024.
(This transcript has been edited for brevity.)
Ep 032 is sponsored by Baltimore Photo Space, where you can pick up a copy of Juan’s book Genesis, along with many other great titles.
Links:
Juan Brenner
Genesis