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.

Study for the translation of Modern Times (1936)
Co/lapse (Unrevised Edition)
Given the right conditions, any sound can pass through a wall
Notes on the translation of El Solitario (or Preface to the English edition)
Trial (the actors and the translator)
Evidence
Fabrications

 Estudio Cinefotográfica Azteca




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.





Study for the translation of Modern Times (1936)
Single-channel 4K video, Open studio & set



Co/lapse (Unrevised Edition)
Single-channel video, 32:48 min.
4K video (color, sound)



Given the right conditions, any sound
can pass through a wall
Two-channel video installation, 12:40 min.
Wall structure, synchronized 4K video (color, sound)
Variable dimensions.



Notes on the translation of El Solitario
(or Preface to the English Edition)
Two-channel video, 28:08 min.
4K video and Super 8mm film transferred 
to digital (color, sound).



Trial (the actors and the translator)
4K video, blackout structure, translation drafts, 
light table, 4x5 film negatives, inkjet prints.
Three actors audition for the role of “José,” the 
semi-fictional protagonist of El Solitario, a novel in process of translation (later addressed at length in 
Notes on the translation...)
Overall variable dimensions.


Evidence
Framed inkjet prints, 21 x 21 in each.
Installed at corresponding positions on 
two sides of the same wall.



Fabrications
Inkjet prints, ink drawings, wood, metal, glass,
fishing line, caster wheels.
A recreation of a camera as remembered 
by one of its owners 40 years after using it.
Overall variable dimensions.



Estudio Cinefotográfica Azteca I-IV
Framed photographic cut-outs from the archives
of Estudio Cinefotográfica Azteca, a former family-run photo studio in Tapachula, Mexico.
15 x 20 in each.