This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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About the PhotographerMagnum photographer Lua Ribeira was born in Galicia (Spain) in 1986. She graduated in Documentary Photography from the University of South Wales in 2016 and since then she has continued her engagement in education running workshops and as a guest lecturer at various universities. Her work has received several awards and honors, including the Firecracker Grant for Women in Photography and the Jerwood/Photoworks award. Her work has been published in book form by Fishbar, London in 2017, and has been featured in the publication Firecrackers: Female Photographers Now published by Thames and Hudson as well as Raw View Magazine’s “Women Looking at Women.” She was nominated for the Foam Paul Huf award and Prix Pictet 2019. Her work has been exhibited internationally in both solo and group shows, most recently at ICP in the group show Close Enough: New Perspectives from 12 Women Photographers of Magnum, curated by Charlotte Cotton. In March 2023, DALPINE is publishing her first monograph Subida al Cielo alongside a solo show at Tabakalera Museum in Donosti, in the Basque Country. |
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Truth in Photography: Talk about your book, Subida al Cielo (Ascending to Heaven).
Lua Ribeira: The book will be released on the 16th of March by Dalpine, alongside an exhibition in San Sebastian (Spain). It consists of five different bodies of work made between 2016 to 2020, which all come together into this one piece. It’s chronological and one project comes after the other, but as a reader, you don't necessarily realize when you're changing from one to the next. Even if each work belongs to different themes and locations, there is a search and motivation that unites them all.
My approach to the work has always been instinctive, letting the images happen slowly, but in a very visceral way. I don’t want to stop that because I find truth in that process, but to translate it into a market, a system, you have to make it fit into a certain shape. And that process was the most difficult part for me, which I had some kind of resistance to. But working with the publisher has been a privilege, we have traveled together over all possible paths for the book, so it feels good to now be able to share it.
TiP: Is the book in English or Spanish?
Ribeira: It’s bilingual. The main language is Spanish, but you’ve got all the translations.
TiP: What is your work about?
Ribeira: I think I start taking pictures always with a political motivation. I come from a place that historically has been oppressed. My language, customs, and anything related to my culture were condemned during the fascist dictatorship in Spain that lasted until 1975. In my generation, there is still a burden of that feeling and some type of shame in relation to our identity that continues to manifest in daily life. I didn't have the tools when I was growing up to understand that, because there has been a denial in addressing that history. So, it took me many years to realize the reasons why the work I do is always related to the dynamics of oppression. It's been a long process to understand that the work comes from home, from those roots.
The photography that I've been doing is always about encountering people. And it’s a lot about not allowing the structures in which we live to block those encounters, and to give chances to relationships that might not happen otherwise.
TiP: I think that your point about photography being political is a very good one. I think the act of making a photograph is a political act because it is a choice. It is selection. It is framed. It has a composition. These choices that we make as photographers inevitably have an underpinning that is political. It's the way we see the world. It raises questions about truth. Clearly truth in photography is not an absolute. Truth in photography is a question. If there is a truth in photography, what is it?
Ribeira: For me, I would say it is the balance between the expression of the photographer and the person photographed. The person in the picture is also expressing something. Some people call it a collaboration. Perhaps, but for me it’s about the balance between those tensions and those inputs into the process of making the image that I have found sometimes a transformative experience, which translates into something truthful.
Lua Ribeira: The book will be released on the 16th of March by Dalpine, alongside an exhibition in San Sebastian (Spain). It consists of five different bodies of work made between 2016 to 2020, which all come together into this one piece. It’s chronological and one project comes after the other, but as a reader, you don't necessarily realize when you're changing from one to the next. Even if each work belongs to different themes and locations, there is a search and motivation that unites them all.
My approach to the work has always been instinctive, letting the images happen slowly, but in a very visceral way. I don’t want to stop that because I find truth in that process, but to translate it into a market, a system, you have to make it fit into a certain shape. And that process was the most difficult part for me, which I had some kind of resistance to. But working with the publisher has been a privilege, we have traveled together over all possible paths for the book, so it feels good to now be able to share it.
TiP: Is the book in English or Spanish?
Ribeira: It’s bilingual. The main language is Spanish, but you’ve got all the translations.
TiP: What is your work about?
Ribeira: I think I start taking pictures always with a political motivation. I come from a place that historically has been oppressed. My language, customs, and anything related to my culture were condemned during the fascist dictatorship in Spain that lasted until 1975. In my generation, there is still a burden of that feeling and some type of shame in relation to our identity that continues to manifest in daily life. I didn't have the tools when I was growing up to understand that, because there has been a denial in addressing that history. So, it took me many years to realize the reasons why the work I do is always related to the dynamics of oppression. It's been a long process to understand that the work comes from home, from those roots.
The photography that I've been doing is always about encountering people. And it’s a lot about not allowing the structures in which we live to block those encounters, and to give chances to relationships that might not happen otherwise.
TiP: I think that your point about photography being political is a very good one. I think the act of making a photograph is a political act because it is a choice. It is selection. It is framed. It has a composition. These choices that we make as photographers inevitably have an underpinning that is political. It's the way we see the world. It raises questions about truth. Clearly truth in photography is not an absolute. Truth in photography is a question. If there is a truth in photography, what is it?
Ribeira: For me, I would say it is the balance between the expression of the photographer and the person photographed. The person in the picture is also expressing something. Some people call it a collaboration. Perhaps, but for me it’s about the balance between those tensions and those inputs into the process of making the image that I have found sometimes a transformative experience, which translates into something truthful.
TiP: I think that's very true. It’s a collaboration if you are fabricating a scene. If you're creating a scene that is in some sense fictional because there's also truth in fiction.
Ribeira: Totally agree that it can be true in fiction. There is this sentence I really like of Robert Bresson, the filmmaker, and he said, “The crude real will not by itself yield truth.” It always resonates with me.
TiP: But there's always an interaction between the photographer and the subject. And the subject, if the subject is looking at you, it's one kind of interaction. But if the subject is not looking at you, it's a different kind of interaction.
Ribeira: When I'm photographing, it turns into a much more unpredictable setup, where it’s about the encounter. Even if sometimes I make work in environments that are quite intense, I don't usually photograph in the moments that reflect directly on that intensity. I work on long-term projects where empty time happens. Sometimes, I can use simple actions to help create the scenario where images can come up. But it’s a lot about losing control, rather than reproducing something previously fixed. It’s more related to searching for images I haven't yet seen.
TiP: The act of making a photograph, in a way, is a performance. You are performing and the person you are photographing is performing as well. I like the use of the word encounter. In your process, are your photographs spontaneous or are they planned?
Ribeira: They’re spontaneous.
TiP: You're responding to the moment?
Ribeira: I'm responding to the moment, but it’s true that in my process I use a lot of visual research where I study images from other figurative arts. It is some kind of training. In my notes I mix images from film stills with paintings, photographs, vernacular images as well as my own drawings. I realized that the images I'm interested in are very elemental. Almost archetypal, like simple actions, or simple meanings, for example a piece of bread, or someone falling down. That made it very easy for me to be able to share my process. It touches that universality of what an image can communicate. That, of course, changes with the context, but holds onto something recognizable.
TiP: Could you talk specifically about a body of work or different bodies of work?
Ribeira: In my fathers hometown there is an institution for women with cognitive disabilities. It's a religious institution that after the Spanish civil war became a home for women in precarious living situations.
I spent a couple of summers there in 2014 and 2015, not thinking too much about photographs at the start, because the encounter was rich enough that photography didn't have its moment yet. In 2016, after taking images that were not working, some theater workshops started to happen in the afternoons that I was collaborating on. Setting up the workshops in the garden, I saw a way I could photograph, where images could happen quite organically and reciprocally. And that’s the second project featured in the book, which is called “Aristócratas” (Aristocrats).
Ribeira: Totally agree that it can be true in fiction. There is this sentence I really like of Robert Bresson, the filmmaker, and he said, “The crude real will not by itself yield truth.” It always resonates with me.
TiP: But there's always an interaction between the photographer and the subject. And the subject, if the subject is looking at you, it's one kind of interaction. But if the subject is not looking at you, it's a different kind of interaction.
Ribeira: When I'm photographing, it turns into a much more unpredictable setup, where it’s about the encounter. Even if sometimes I make work in environments that are quite intense, I don't usually photograph in the moments that reflect directly on that intensity. I work on long-term projects where empty time happens. Sometimes, I can use simple actions to help create the scenario where images can come up. But it’s a lot about losing control, rather than reproducing something previously fixed. It’s more related to searching for images I haven't yet seen.
TiP: The act of making a photograph, in a way, is a performance. You are performing and the person you are photographing is performing as well. I like the use of the word encounter. In your process, are your photographs spontaneous or are they planned?
Ribeira: They’re spontaneous.
TiP: You're responding to the moment?
Ribeira: I'm responding to the moment, but it’s true that in my process I use a lot of visual research where I study images from other figurative arts. It is some kind of training. In my notes I mix images from film stills with paintings, photographs, vernacular images as well as my own drawings. I realized that the images I'm interested in are very elemental. Almost archetypal, like simple actions, or simple meanings, for example a piece of bread, or someone falling down. That made it very easy for me to be able to share my process. It touches that universality of what an image can communicate. That, of course, changes with the context, but holds onto something recognizable.
TiP: Could you talk specifically about a body of work or different bodies of work?
Ribeira: In my fathers hometown there is an institution for women with cognitive disabilities. It's a religious institution that after the Spanish civil war became a home for women in precarious living situations.
I spent a couple of summers there in 2014 and 2015, not thinking too much about photographs at the start, because the encounter was rich enough that photography didn't have its moment yet. In 2016, after taking images that were not working, some theater workshops started to happen in the afternoons that I was collaborating on. Setting up the workshops in the garden, I saw a way I could photograph, where images could happen quite organically and reciprocally. And that’s the second project featured in the book, which is called “Aristócratas” (Aristocrats).
TiP: Why do you call it “Aristocrats”?
Ribeira: The work approaches the idea of disability from a more philosophical place. It comes from the need to question the idea of normality in relation to the existence of separated communities that have been there historically, somehow confirming that idea of “normality” for those outside their confinement. For me, the interest was to generate an encounter without fear or too many preconceptions. The work is also a reaction against the sharply established right or wrong, and a suspicion of certain moral assertiveness. Understanding that it is complicated, that there are limits, but through certain encounters something transformative can happen, where we grow and realize that things have more potential than we’ve been taught. The title is to provoke an inverse reading of something that I think is, as anything else, questionable.
TiP: It seems that women's themes are very much pervasive in your work. What role do you think photography has in the pursuit of gender equity?
Ribeira: I photograph people, but surely from the perspective of being a woman. Through the process of being a photographer and growing up, I tried to not let my behavior be guided by the limitations that are often projected based on class and gender, in my case. I think it is important to be aware of the work that still needs to be done in relation to gender, class and racial discrimination, resisting and to keep on reflecting about a problem that is structural and pervasive.
Ribeira: The work approaches the idea of disability from a more philosophical place. It comes from the need to question the idea of normality in relation to the existence of separated communities that have been there historically, somehow confirming that idea of “normality” for those outside their confinement. For me, the interest was to generate an encounter without fear or too many preconceptions. The work is also a reaction against the sharply established right or wrong, and a suspicion of certain moral assertiveness. Understanding that it is complicated, that there are limits, but through certain encounters something transformative can happen, where we grow and realize that things have more potential than we’ve been taught. The title is to provoke an inverse reading of something that I think is, as anything else, questionable.
TiP: It seems that women's themes are very much pervasive in your work. What role do you think photography has in the pursuit of gender equity?
Ribeira: I photograph people, but surely from the perspective of being a woman. Through the process of being a photographer and growing up, I tried to not let my behavior be guided by the limitations that are often projected based on class and gender, in my case. I think it is important to be aware of the work that still needs to be done in relation to gender, class and racial discrimination, resisting and to keep on reflecting about a problem that is structural and pervasive.
TiP: We've been featuring the work of the Archive of Public Protest. The people who are part of the Archive of Public Protest make no claims to neutrality. They are very much advocates for the people who are protesting in the street.
Ribeira: The work I do is political, as I said, in motivation, however, it ends up responding to philosophical questions, ones that may not necessarily have a right or wrong answer. I make images, because within visual language I found an ambiguity that keeps the search going, because behind a question there's always another question. But that is how I work. Some moments of support or advocacy are part of my experience whilst making the work, but they are not necessarily the direct subject matter in the photographs.
TiP: I do think photography can become a very powerful tool for advocacy.
Ribeira: It's interesting because photography has all these many forms. Currently, I'm interested in how younger generations are using the medium to project themselves within social media and what types of images they are producing in relation to their lives today. What is interesting about photography is this multiplicity of forms and usages, in ways often where we don't even realize that what we are looking at is photography.
TiP: You were talking about your book in this thread of your development as a photographer. How do you define that thread?
Ribeira: That thread is the search for many things. One is the search for a visual language and to try to understand what images can convey by themselves. I work instinctively, so it takes me a long time to understand the reason behind certain decisions. There is also the need to challenge certain constructions and my work I guess reflects the dizziness that I reach in that attempt.
Ribeira: The work I do is political, as I said, in motivation, however, it ends up responding to philosophical questions, ones that may not necessarily have a right or wrong answer. I make images, because within visual language I found an ambiguity that keeps the search going, because behind a question there's always another question. But that is how I work. Some moments of support or advocacy are part of my experience whilst making the work, but they are not necessarily the direct subject matter in the photographs.
TiP: I do think photography can become a very powerful tool for advocacy.
Ribeira: It's interesting because photography has all these many forms. Currently, I'm interested in how younger generations are using the medium to project themselves within social media and what types of images they are producing in relation to their lives today. What is interesting about photography is this multiplicity of forms and usages, in ways often where we don't even realize that what we are looking at is photography.
TiP: You were talking about your book in this thread of your development as a photographer. How do you define that thread?
Ribeira: That thread is the search for many things. One is the search for a visual language and to try to understand what images can convey by themselves. I work instinctively, so it takes me a long time to understand the reason behind certain decisions. There is also the need to challenge certain constructions and my work I guess reflects the dizziness that I reach in that attempt.
TiP: I can see how that applies to the series you were talking about, the home for people with cognitive disabilities. What's another series of your work that you feel explores this?
Ribeira: Another series that I worked on recently is called “Los Afortunados,” on the Moroccan and Spanish border. It’s a conflicted border between Africa and Europe that is often overlooked, and where atrocities take place everyday under European law. I worked with the young people from Morocco who were taking the risk to try to cross the border there, before the pandemic.
In the way I work, it takes me a long time to start thinking about images, because this experience has an intensity where I don't immediately see how photography can fit. Also, in this case, the context is so stereotyped by how the news and the media have been dealing with it for a long time. The most important part of the work is to be there. At some point, I started to look at the skies, which are always blue and they’re very open, and usually of no use in this type of narrative created around the border. Then I began to focus on the moments of adrenaline that the young people are going through, who are also at an age where danger is very relative and you’re having a clear objective. I focused on that precisely.
TiP: In what ways do you feel you're trying to convey the truth of the place? The truth of the people? Or is that even a concern?
Ribeira: The only truth is the exchange of vulnerabilities that takes place in the process, and this is something I can hope for within the work to hold, but that is all. I understand the futility of my own work. It starts from anger and the impossibility of ignoring something. But it turns into something else, more complex. There’s a lot of acceptance and a lot of questioning. And probably it is that same questioning that took me such a long time to publish the work or to make a book.
Ribeira: Another series that I worked on recently is called “Los Afortunados,” on the Moroccan and Spanish border. It’s a conflicted border between Africa and Europe that is often overlooked, and where atrocities take place everyday under European law. I worked with the young people from Morocco who were taking the risk to try to cross the border there, before the pandemic.
In the way I work, it takes me a long time to start thinking about images, because this experience has an intensity where I don't immediately see how photography can fit. Also, in this case, the context is so stereotyped by how the news and the media have been dealing with it for a long time. The most important part of the work is to be there. At some point, I started to look at the skies, which are always blue and they’re very open, and usually of no use in this type of narrative created around the border. Then I began to focus on the moments of adrenaline that the young people are going through, who are also at an age where danger is very relative and you’re having a clear objective. I focused on that precisely.
TiP: In what ways do you feel you're trying to convey the truth of the place? The truth of the people? Or is that even a concern?
Ribeira: The only truth is the exchange of vulnerabilities that takes place in the process, and this is something I can hope for within the work to hold, but that is all. I understand the futility of my own work. It starts from anger and the impossibility of ignoring something. But it turns into something else, more complex. There’s a lot of acceptance and a lot of questioning. And probably it is that same questioning that took me such a long time to publish the work or to make a book.
TiP: Talk about the people who are in your photographs focusing on this border. What do you hope is the takeaway when people see these photographs? What do you want people to feel?
Ribeira: Depending on who looks, they surely see something different and will have different reactions. Some people only want to look at the “correct” things, to “smoothly be consumed”. The work is open and I am not telling you how you should feel about it. In Spain this is a complicated subject, which has generated a lot of xenophobia, racism, and fear in the people. So ideally I hope another side of the story, a more familiar one, will appear through the work.
TiP: So, you’re trying to humanize people who are potentially demonized.
Ribeira: Maybe. That’s an interesting way to put it.
TiP: Talk about another series.
Ribeira: “La Jungla” is a series that happened to be in Tijuana. It started out as a collective project, where a group of Magnum photographers went to make work at the U.S. border during the migration crisis with Trump. We settled mainly in San Diego and Tijuana, and for a couple of weeks we made a short project. For me, it was the first time I traveled to make work in a place that I didn’t previously know, and I was a little apprehensive. Once there, I met someone by chance who was living in a park beside the border-wall, close to where I was staying. When I visited the park, known as La Jungla, I felt that if I devoted my time in Tijuana to this particular place, perhaps it could work.
There were about ten men living in the park in built shelters . Each of them had different reasons to be there. The idea of what constituted a migrant started again to become more complicated and liquid. I started to make connections and follow their stories. This is a project that happened in a very short period of time, but it had a certain intensity. So, I decided to include it in the book because I believe that an encounter happened, which at the end is what the work is about.
Ribeira: Depending on who looks, they surely see something different and will have different reactions. Some people only want to look at the “correct” things, to “smoothly be consumed”. The work is open and I am not telling you how you should feel about it. In Spain this is a complicated subject, which has generated a lot of xenophobia, racism, and fear in the people. So ideally I hope another side of the story, a more familiar one, will appear through the work.
TiP: So, you’re trying to humanize people who are potentially demonized.
Ribeira: Maybe. That’s an interesting way to put it.
TiP: Talk about another series.
Ribeira: “La Jungla” is a series that happened to be in Tijuana. It started out as a collective project, where a group of Magnum photographers went to make work at the U.S. border during the migration crisis with Trump. We settled mainly in San Diego and Tijuana, and for a couple of weeks we made a short project. For me, it was the first time I traveled to make work in a place that I didn’t previously know, and I was a little apprehensive. Once there, I met someone by chance who was living in a park beside the border-wall, close to where I was staying. When I visited the park, known as La Jungla, I felt that if I devoted my time in Tijuana to this particular place, perhaps it could work.
There were about ten men living in the park in built shelters . Each of them had different reasons to be there. The idea of what constituted a migrant started again to become more complicated and liquid. I started to make connections and follow their stories. This is a project that happened in a very short period of time, but it had a certain intensity. So, I decided to include it in the book because I believe that an encounter happened, which at the end is what the work is about.
TiP: I think it's interesting that you focus a lot on trying to include your engagement in the images that you make. How is that expressed? How do you feel your presence?
Ribeira: For me, it's impossible to understand the work by pretending not to be there. I inevitably have a strong presence when I enter for instance in this park where there's ten people living and dealing with the context of intrinsic violence and corruption given within the borderland. For me to go there and to spend time, and not really making images for large parts of the time, is important and defines the work later. The relationship is not based on the dynamics of an assignment, or a job that needs to be done.
TiP: So, in part, your photographs are looking potentially at issues of truth that other people are living. But it's also the truth of yourself, because it seems like you put a high premium on wanting to be true to yourself in the way in which you're engaging, the way in which you're encountering others.
Ribeira: Truth is a complicated word, right? Because we all have our own truths. I seem to mainly have my doubts.
Ribeira: For me, it's impossible to understand the work by pretending not to be there. I inevitably have a strong presence when I enter for instance in this park where there's ten people living and dealing with the context of intrinsic violence and corruption given within the borderland. For me to go there and to spend time, and not really making images for large parts of the time, is important and defines the work later. The relationship is not based on the dynamics of an assignment, or a job that needs to be done.
TiP: So, in part, your photographs are looking potentially at issues of truth that other people are living. But it's also the truth of yourself, because it seems like you put a high premium on wanting to be true to yourself in the way in which you're engaging, the way in which you're encountering others.
Ribeira: Truth is a complicated word, right? Because we all have our own truths. I seem to mainly have my doubts.
TiP: If you're responding, sometimes we are deceived, sometimes we’re misled, sometimes we're drawn into a reality that we don't understand. It's what you're talking about. How can we possibly know the truth of these people that we don't know?
Ribeira: You can´t. Or sometimes you do, but the question could also be why would you expect to do so?
TiP: We can only see them at that moment. They are there for an instant in the process of making the photograph.
Ribeira: I think it is interesting to reflect on what we want from photography and where the need for certain information comes from. For me, what's beautiful about it is the realization that the structures that separate us, that seem really strong, are actually quite fragile at the same time. And that has the potential to make you think differently.
I have never felt the benefit to share the testimonies from people. I think the stories and the things that have been shared whilst making the work belong to a certain space that don't necessarily translate. It’s only the image that makes it, because it holds enough ambiguity and is open enough for the person who looks at it to make their own story. The images that interest me the most are the ones that can serve as a kind of mirror. Something that is gestural, that has the potential to resonate.
TIP: What’s next for you?
Ribeira: I'm working on a new series called ‘Agony in the Garden’, which was recently shown as part of Close Enough: New Perspectives from 12 Women Photographers of Magnum at the ICP in New York. It’s more connected to the younger generation and the way they use images, and how they're using music, to address the traces of this pre-apocalyptic environment we are getting into. I’ve been trying to translate that into images. I'm very interested in the younger people making fresh sounds and new images that don’t necessarily belong to the art or photography world, but that I feel come from a necessity to express themselves in circumstances that are very complicated. I feel there's something important in there, and I'm trying to get inspiration from that and to keep working.
Ribeira: You can´t. Or sometimes you do, but the question could also be why would you expect to do so?
TiP: We can only see them at that moment. They are there for an instant in the process of making the photograph.
Ribeira: I think it is interesting to reflect on what we want from photography and where the need for certain information comes from. For me, what's beautiful about it is the realization that the structures that separate us, that seem really strong, are actually quite fragile at the same time. And that has the potential to make you think differently.
I have never felt the benefit to share the testimonies from people. I think the stories and the things that have been shared whilst making the work belong to a certain space that don't necessarily translate. It’s only the image that makes it, because it holds enough ambiguity and is open enough for the person who looks at it to make their own story. The images that interest me the most are the ones that can serve as a kind of mirror. Something that is gestural, that has the potential to resonate.
TIP: What’s next for you?
Ribeira: I'm working on a new series called ‘Agony in the Garden’, which was recently shown as part of Close Enough: New Perspectives from 12 Women Photographers of Magnum at the ICP in New York. It’s more connected to the younger generation and the way they use images, and how they're using music, to address the traces of this pre-apocalyptic environment we are getting into. I’ve been trying to translate that into images. I'm very interested in the younger people making fresh sounds and new images that don’t necessarily belong to the art or photography world, but that I feel come from a necessity to express themselves in circumstances that are very complicated. I feel there's something important in there, and I'm trying to get inspiration from that and to keep working.
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