by Roberta Marroquin

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Red Typewriter

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In my search of the uncanny, I use photography as a support of the imaginary and light is my tool. My domains of predilection are spaces filled with darkness and with light I unveil a new universe, which unfolds through the viewer’s imagination. In 2009 I started working on a series of photographs called Underneath Light. I have always being fascinated by my country’s ancestral beliefs in spirits that still commingle with Christianity. In my photos, I like to play with this idea. I become the Shaman, the seer, the healer, and the magician, divining spirits and revealing what remains unseen under ordinary light. Wielding a flashlight and using a large format or digital camera, I create my own narrative of the night, and generate ephemeral moments of profound meaning. I explore the mysterious, the sublime, the unexpected, the often obscure and unnoticed; some of those hidden meanings that lie on the edge of consciousness. As such, my photographs become polymorphic entities. Dreams, death, and dread are recurring topics in my work. Some images evoke otherworldly feelings and often have a haunted effect; some others convey a disembodied quality. There are allusions to primitive and Christian rituals as well, which evoke a ceremonial atmosphere. After having completed the “Underneath Light” series, this new body of work Dans le Noir (“In the Dark”) is more complex and strident. The photographs derive from a similar worldview, the two disparate cultures that coexist in Mexico: modern Christianity and the still-pervasive ancient Indian beliefs. The images reflect dreams, wishes and desires – panoply of memories, emotions and intents. The seemingly normal scenarios and characters undergo an eerie metamorphosis during the process of shooting in the dark. Modern Christianity, as practiced in my country, with its punitive view of man, becomes a frightening theme. Macabre Aztec and Mayan beliefs that lie in the collective memory of Mexico suddenly emerge. Christian and ancient Indian beliefs intertwine and converge with a view of nature as predatory, as well as with allusions to ancient Greek and Roman myths and children’s stories. I have experienced a plethora of images about suffering, fear, loneliness, despair, struggle, and moral duality in my culture. These images raise some important issues about the existence of good and evil in the world and where the real and the unreal coexist. This project represents a further venture into the realm of Magical Realism, where fantastic elements blend with the ordinary to reveal a deeper understanding of the world. Much like The Scream, the well-known expressionist painting by Edvard Munch, this body of work expresses an existential angst. These provocative photographs become my own primal outcry about the tragedy of the human condition.

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