ALEXANDRO RÚA

Jun 9

Originally from Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, he learned photography by walking the streets of the city center. He is currently studying Cultural Mediation at the School of Arts of Jalisco.

Who are you, and what has been your journey in photography?

AR: I have been taking photographs for six years, wherever I happen to be. I started in my grandparents’ hometown, Tuxpan, Jalisco, when the pandemic brought an end to local events and patron saint festivities for the rest of the year. There, I created my first photo essay, capturing the town when it was still and deserted. Later, I wandered through the forests and streets of Guadalajara, and today I document other processes beyond street photography, such as grief and the therapeutic journeys of mothers searching for their missing loved ones.

How would you classify your photographic work, or what do you seek to represent through your images?

AR: I believe my documentary work focuses on the human condition, human connection, and our relationship with public space. I am interested in how reality, when observed carefully, can express the same logic as a dream—not through extravagance, but through an everyday strangeness shaped by memory and the passage of time.

What themes, emotions, or realities tend to appear consistently in your work?

AR: Solitude and a sense of strangeness. I like my photographs to be questions that I pose to life.

What is your process like when photographing people, spaces, or everyday situations?

AR: I tend to wander through the same places because I’m now interested in working within specific territories. Sometimes I feel afraid, but lately I’ve been having very long conversations with people on the street—more conversations than photographs, actually. Other times, the photograph reveals itself because the situation resonates with the questions and themes I’m exploring.

What advice would you give to emerging photographers who are trying to find their own voice and artistic perspective?

AR: Embrace the nerves. Pay attention to what moves you emotionally and take the risk of capturing it. Fear never really goes away, and that’s okay. I believe fear is there to teach us something, not to be something we run away from.