Oregon Art Beat; #703; Paulina Hermosillo

So how's it coming out? It's coming out really good and just have to be a little bit careful if I would like to preserve his face, but other than that, I think it will be very good. I just went a little bit of texture in the wall, but I want these figures to be as sharp as possible. I think this one is done. Now I will just need to let it dry, sometimes I put it on the sand, I'm sometimes just a little bit like this and then get a little wavy, but very

nice. I just wanted to ask you, I mean we've been talking all day and we've got some great information, but I wanted to ask you just a little more specifically about how you choose the images you choose. How do you choose the images I choose? Well, it's a very difficult question, but I think first, if the way that I choose it is, well first, if I like the composition, and second, we'll be very close to first, if I'm telling what I want to say, you know, and that is very subjective, because a photographer always thinks, oh, I'm really when I'm going to say it, but then when you show it to people it's another story, right? And the third part

that I choose in a photograph is, well I guess it's going to be kind of served for some purpose. And for me that is very important, the purpose that is very important to me is the education, is to promote, to know each other, like in talking about the United States, I'm very interested in know each other like a community, no more, my own community, my own Mexican community here, but also to know better the American community and then to try to communicate all those concepts, you know, for me first, and then from my expendator. Okay. That will be part of. Okay, great. Thank you. Did we? I think we're good. Oh, okay. No, just for me to check, sir. Oh, okay. Okay, and then that's great, that makes a lot of sense. I think, so it sounds like to me from seeing your work and talking to you that I think is very interesting. You do kind of

a lot of documenting of sort of the Mexican experience here in Oregon. Yes, the Mexican experience here in Oregon, but also it's interesting because growing up in Mexico City, I have a lot of, you know, influence of the American culture too. So when I'm photographing here, even if it's the because, you know, the Mexican culture, I have the background of learning a lot of, you know, American culture too. Like, in this case, I didn't work all those, my superstar. You know, I love you, man. Or Robert, my plethora, or a lot, a lot more artists and writers. And when I came here, it's like I feel so rich in my kind of luggish, you know, that I receive in my life through education, but also through my contact again with American culture,

Mexican, I mean American music, like blues, jazz, all of that. And then coming here to Oregon and discover all these beautiful rural areas, but also to have the opportunity to go, you know, to Portland to have a good time with the blues festival. You know, other kind of stuff is something that I have in my head when I'm photographing, I think. And in another hand is like recreation of the culture, you know, the culture is moving. People talk a lot about this thing of globalization, you know. But I think the culture is part of this new edge of the history, you know, the globalization. The culture is globalization too, you know. And you can start to see a lot of the influence from cultures from all over the world, you know. And re -creator and something that you like artists can express, and I like that. Okay, I was going to ask you, Bill, are we hearing the conversation in the kitchen too much?

No, okay. Let me ask them. Oh, I just want to check. It sounds like it's okay. Okay, good. Are you sure? Yeah, no problem. Because I can ask them to them. I think they're good. I just want to check, for sure, with the sound. Jenny Ferrico, say no, Ablen. Thank you. Let's see. Okay, I wanted to tell you a little bit about... So tell me a little bit more about your experiences as a woman from Mexico working here in Oregon. Well, I think actually here in Oregon has been very easy, you know, for me to work as a woman. Maybe as a woman is more difficult in my own country. Because probably when I started to photograph it ten years ago, it used to be, you know, a little bit more kind of sexist. Now, you know, it's very different. I know the society in Mexico is, you know, evolutionating really fast, really, really fast. And, you know, the ideas are changing a lot, and people is very liberated over there too, you know. But my difficulty

as a woman is sometimes when I have to interact with some ethnicities or some indigenous people, or even here in Salem, Oregon, when I go to visit some families, and they came from some different areas of Mexico too, but they have different customs, and sometimes they look at me like, what she's doing, you know, that's kind of weird. You know, we are not very used to it. And they always are more used to it to see a man, you know. And I notice that they treat you a little different when I go to shooting a wedding. I notice that they treat a little different the photographer man than the photographer woman. But other than that, I don't think so. I have any difficulty. You know, I'm gonna get used to it, I guess. Well, tell me a little bit about what we're doing today with Victoria in the market. What does that kind of work? Well, Victoria and me, we were having an idea of working together in our free time, because we're gonna try to do some, try to look for some

kind of Latin image, but we also, we wanna rescue and recreate all the Mexican cultural of the 20th century, you know. And that has to do a lot with our icons, that also there were icons in many, many countries and many places in the world. And there are very important artists, you know, that, like I said, there were icons. So, Victoria and me, we are trying to get a little bit of that ambiance, and the way that the divas of the Mexican movie that were, you know, photographed by, oh my gosh, I forgot that this makes very famous Mexican photographer. I'll give you the information later. But we wanna do something like in black and white, some of those really beautiful clouds and then, you know, beautiful sceneries, but then the model in the middle, and sometimes she

plays like a farm worker, sometimes she plays like a rumbera, sometimes she plays like a charra, you know. I have photos with her with her hat and everything, because we wanna create some, like the traditional icon of the Mexican woman, but we wanna start to move a little bit and create some kind of advertising image also, you know. Because Hispanic media and Oregon is growing up really, really fast, you know. And now we have different national Spanish channels, you know. So, I think it's a good opportunity for us to start to create some roles. And, you know, maybe to put some kind of little precedent, precedent, and then, I don't know what will happen after that, but that's our idea. We're just playing to see what happened, and if we have the opportunity to get access to the Hispanic media, we try to promote that. So, then in the future, we have

another girl that at least they will say, oh, I saw Victoria on the TV, I like her outfit, though. I feel like her, I can be like her, you know. And we wanna, one of my principal ideas of all the work that I'm doing in Oregon has to do also with promote the good image of the Hispanic community, you know, because it's not always a gang guy, or it's not always a guy who's, you know, it's gonna do something, I don't know, with bad image, whatever role we, whatever. Well, whatever potential we can have, the good thing is also a lot of Hispanic community here is working really hard, they have a small business, they're employing other people. But that money is not only for Mexicans, that money is for here, for Marin County, from

the counties of Oregon too, you know. Yeah, so your goal is kind of education, you know, to educate people here in America, you know, about Mexican culture, and you've kind of chosen to do that, you know, through your photography. How did you choose photography? Why do you do photography? Well, I'll do photography because in reality, I have to drink in my life. The first one, I know I don't have the talent to do it, and that's painting. And the second one is to be a movie maker, and I love movies. But it's so difficult, I'm so expensive. I'm a special expensive, you need a lot of, you know, like in this case, I've been crew and everything. But in photography, it's a little bit more, oops, it's a little bit more, something happened. Hold on. I don't know. Yes, this fell down. About how you chose photography, and you said it was because you aren't doing movies. I always went to do movies, but also I choose photography because I think it's a great way to communicate,

you know. I always say that so old and very, you know, that, well. What they, photographers say, photography say more than a thousand of words, and that's true, you know. And I choose that because since I was a little girl, my mother just to have a subscription at Time Magazine. And we received a magazine every, I think every month. And I used to see the photography of Ann Burke, White, and other people. And I thought, oh, this is really cool too, you know. And I thought, well, someday I will do something like that. So I think photography is one of the best media to communicate and to educate and to promote, you know. I love the things. It could be positive things, sometimes it could be negative things, but I choose the positive ones. And do you have, would you say you

have a favorite kind of subject that you work with, or favorite sort of idea? Well, I don't want to be too inboxing something all the time because I think one of the friends of creativity is that you were able to change your subject model sometimes. But right now what is really important to me and my main subject model is, I'll say three topics that they are, I have to do with one, with the other one. And one is history, and the other one is all these movements in the world that is not only in the United States, that is the immigration, you know. Because immigration is a phenomenon that is all over the world. But now we have the case that the United States and Mexico share the most important border in the world too, where

everything happened, you know. Since the biggest business to the world. So, I think right now what is happening, this topic about the Mexican culture developed outside of Mexico is so important and so wide. And I have too much to do that for the moment. I'm very busy with that. And what drew you to the transfer process that we just saw? What drew you to that? Why did you decide to do that kind of thing? Oh, when I decided that kind of process because when I have opportunity to have some classes of photographic classes in Oregon State University, that by the way is one of the greatest experiences that I ever had. I don't know what my teachers think about me because I was always late but I have to work and I have to do a lot of the things. But I learned that technique and I really like it. I thought, wow, I always been trying to do something like a painting. So, when I discovered that beautiful

technique, I thought, this is cool. I can be doing this forever, you know. Now I have to confront the problems of the crossover to all this film, Polaroid, negative, everything to digital, you know. But I'll say what happened in the future? I was still working with all those techniques. Yeah, what do you hope the future will hold for you in your photography? Well, I don't really know what the future will be in the way of marketing. But I think in my future I see like just to be ambitious of capture everything that I can of archaeological sites in Mexico, archaeological sites now in the United States. I keep working with the people who are in the grant, not only from Mexico, but also from Latin America.

I don't know, just keep going and keep going. I don't know what is going to happen in the future. But I think one of my goals is to have a document, you know, and maybe the future will be not exactly for me, but maybe for somebody else, you know. To have something there that means something. Okay, great. Well, Polaroid, I really appreciate you spending the time with us today. Oh, no, no, my place is right. I have two requests. Yes, sure. I'm moving. I'm moving. Can you move your microphone when you hear it just now? Can you repeat that question? Sure. Tell me the three things, you know, what you look for in an image. Well, the three things that I look for in an image is first to have a good composition. Then second, to see if I have something to say with my image. And that is really important, almost as important in the first one. And the third one is see if I can

have some education on it. And you know, if I can educate somebody with that. In a very humble way, it's not like, oh, I can't educate in this. You know, just to show another perspective. Sure. Okay. And then tell us a little bit about how we were doing that transfer process in the garage. Well, when I discovered that beautiful technique and Oregon State University, what I was doing, my major in photography. And I have the opportunity to make a really wonderful teachers there and improve a lot in my techniques. I have the opportunity to learn this technique that is a polar transfer. And I was fascinated with that, you know, because it's so incredible. And finally, I can have that last touch of the paint that I have been always ambitious, you know. So that's what I'm so happy with that process, because I can get that. I think we should have her see Frida. Actually, what I was asking for in that is, you know, talk

to us as if you're doing that particular one. Oh, sort of talk us through it. You're talking about that particular one. Yeah, just kind of a nutshell. How do you do it? No, this one. Oh, it's taken so long because of the color. And then finally, we get there and you say, you know, just, you know, the head isn't there. And then when you're finishing it, I'll talk about the process you went through with that one fish. Sure. Well, you see all the process with that polar transfer that I had, the image that I have of the fortune teller. That was very difficult process like you can see, because it's no process that I can see what's going to happen in the future. It's not predictable. So usually I can say, oh, well, it's going to take me one minute, sometimes five minutes. But at the end, it's more than that, you know, and I have to keep waiting. Then you know, I noticed with the experience

that what happened is also depends of the density of the film. It has to do also is a chemical composition that happened through the light, you know. And when the photograph is a little bit more kind of like a darker, I would say, it's a little bit more easier to do the transfer because a motion is just a little bit thicker. And this case of the photograph that we did in the of the fortune teller was more complicated because it's kind of contrasty. There are some images that you can see all the definition, but the background is really white. And that's going to take us forever. So I have to be very careful trying to manipulate the photo more than usual. And then to transfer to the color paper was complicated because the photograph gets to loosen. And then was floating in the water and I was afraid to lose the whole photograph because it gets all together.

And then it's impossible to kind of like just well, the opposite of sprinkle. I don't know what it is, like when you are eating something and you get really, you know, plain. I tried to do that and I tried to get a little bit of texture on the wall because I was so white that I didn't have any tonality there. So I thought, well, I just can, that's a cool thing of this Polaro transfer. I can play a little bit with the texture of the wall and create some kind of traditional image. Okay. Great. Let's leave your mic on. Oh, and that one here. Let's see the second one peeking behind. That's really fun. Oh, yeah. All right. I guess I can take

my mic off. The frame is not, I think one of these came off is what happened. I don't worry about it. I'll change the frame. It's not a big deal. Just digital too. You can see how flat it is in comparison with the other ones. Oh, you didn't see too much of my black and white that I have over there. Where is that? Here in Salem and in Akinsiana I went to work and it's a desk crisis, like at three H's of the time, you know, that particular guy and then this guy with his cowboy and that one looks more like from the city.

Like he's dancing in a cabaret or something. How did you do this one again? I couldn't listen when I was shooting earlier. No one? Yeah, how did you do that? Well, I took advantage of the theatrical or the theatre. The theatre were doing that effect with the lights. So the stage? No, no, no. It's not really on stage. What they did is they had the background of the real Diego Rivera Morral. And then they put some kind of lights and just was only one character, one actress. It's her, she was performing the Katrina. So she then she stand

up. You put a slow sink flash and I helped you a little bit. But I didn't at the time there were no very good flashes like now. My equipment at the time, that photo has like 10 years. I did it with all my manual equipment at the time. So everything that you see here mostly is new but I just have some pictures of her. Like the archaeological stuff and the woman with the lots of stuff has more than 10 years. That was kind of dangerous. We're in 2004. Those ones I should have like in maybe 91 or something. So now it sounds like you don't sell some of your art photography. You don't sell but do you sell some of your art photography? Some of my art photography, I'm not very good selling it. Yes, I sell it. The word from

a magazine that is Mexico is conocido. It's like on Discovery in Mexico. It's like the National Geographic, but from Mexico. I get used to it to work for magazines. That's why I kind of lose my practice selling photos on the galleries. I don't know. I get used to it just to go to all kind of magazines. Did you work more in Mexico or do you think you would get more work in Oregon? Oh, it's a difficult question in the way that now I cannot in the middle. You know, because I used to work a lot in Mexico and publish all my work outside of Mexico. Oh really? Mostly from magazines of Europe and the United States. Now I live in Oregon and I just a year ago I started to sell my journalist and my documentary work to the magazines in Mexico. Because now they are very interested in what's happening here in Oregon. In all aspects, you know, for

example, a Mexican airline that now has a direct flight from Mexico City and whether they had a city to Portland, you know. I'm really surprised. I didn't even think about that. So that's pretty cool because, you know, now the magazines of other, they want to publish touristic photos of Oregon. Oh really? That's what I was doing my setup from the ocean. You know, those black and white, but in reality I'm doing some. But, you know, people think that Mexico is only, you know, the really bad and it's just poverty and everything. And it is because the way that is distributed, you know, the social class, you know, sometimes from middle high class or high class is a lot of the difference to, you know, low class or whatever. Or sometimes in the middle we have a lot of divisions too, you know. It's different than US in that way. But there are also

people with a lot of resources and business. And actually one of the most important financial centers of the New York is Arizona for all the transactions between the Mexican business and the American businesses. Yeah, just in 2002 at the state you can save. And the problem right now in Mexico because the economy is getting so fast also, but also with all these movements and international movements or whatever, the problem is sometimes as a matter if you are a professional or you have a business or whatever, sometimes you are day by day, you know, you cannot save too much money. That's I think the difference between Mexican and United States. So it must be hard to have a strong little class. We used to have a very strong middle class, but after NAPTA, a lot of them, the small business disappearing. And unfortunately, I think

that's happening the same thing here. That's part of my project too, to support small business. That's a matter that are Mexican because of Americans. I go to American small business and I tell people, he said, I used to buy a film, you know, 35 millimeters film, probably for $1. And then in a day, the next day, after that crash, the market crash, was $7. The same film. Oh, that's good. This is crazy. And houses, people who just buy houses and credit cards and everything, you used to pay $500 per month. Suddenly, you start to pay. I came here and then I get stuck here. Did you get under for work? Yeah, a little bit for work, a little bit for vacation. And then, you know, I have a friend here who she was my partner in a magazine that we had in Mexico. So she studied here in Oregon. And she said, oh, well, you didn't come here too for a vacation. It's really

cool. And I came here and then just stay here. And because I found a lot of things to do over here. And everything worked fine and I get a lot of work to do. So I thought, well, it's good now to have the opportunity to travel and to go to Mexico and come in over here. So do you like living in America? Do you want to move back here? Well, I really like to live in United States. Sometimes I have a lot of nostalgia and I will like to get back. But in another hand, when I am over there and after two months, then I'm being in Mexico City or visiting my father who lives in Querétaro. Then I thought, oh, I'm starting to miss Oregon.