José De Sancristóbal is an artist and wannabe translator. He works with the entanglement of narrative and image-making processes. Using photography, film, installation, and writing, he engages with practices of erratic positionality operating inside seemingly closed representation systems. The portrayal of these engagements often takes place at the intersection of the camera’s contradictory condition: between its purported objectivity and its propensity for deceit. Informed by photography’s history as a tool to regulate citizens and their movement, his work muddles established modes of identification by considering them against unmeasurable forms: fiction, memory, translation, and magical realism hinder those devices tasked with supervising self and belonging—such as passport photographs, migration regulations, biographical information, or national borders.
Estudio Cinefotográfica Azteca I-IVFramed photographic cut-outs from the archives of Estudio Cinefotográfica Azteca,a former family-run photo studio in Tapachula, Mexico15 x 20 in each