Focus on: the photographer Laura Soria

Can you tell us a bit about you?

I was born and raised in a surrealistic country and a crazy city where everything unexpected can happen, but at the same time is part of the exciting everyday life, full of colors and mythologies: Mexico City. My love for images was influenced by my godfather and supported by my mother. I started to take photos and make videos since my early years, amazed by my surroundings. The camera was an important item at home that we children weren’t allowed to touch, then I got obsessed with it and sometimes I just took it and experimented till I needed to have my own camera. Since then I decided to study photography, parallel to my Communication Sciences studies.After the years’ photography became my lifestyle. Landscape, documentary, fashion, and portrait are my main interests and my works have been published and presented in different magazines and exhibitions.Despite having been considered a photographer, I consider myself a conceptual artist who uses the camera as a way to be conscious of the surroundings and as proof of an apparent reality.

Looking back at your earlier works, what do you think about them today?

My earlier works are just part of my life and my past and when I get the chance to transport my conscience to the past through my explorations I have the chance to analyze my memories and my thoughts of these times, the way I was aware of reality and my representation of what I captured, the feelings and explorations I was doing at the time. My likes and dislikes and also my thoughts are a way to connects one with one’s self in another time and other conditions. A way to sometimes send yourself messages from you in the past and you in the present. To have them present each time we are able to take a look at this box of Pandora (A shoe box or hard disc… whatever may be).

Kat V, 2010, 42x59cm

What have been the highlights of your artistic career?

The favorite moments in my career are the ones that bring me good memories and bring me messages that I sent to myself in the future. And also the ones that the processes to get the results were part of a long way and suddenly became something important because they also send messages to others and they got to understand and feel and identify with these images.

I guess one of my favorite moments in my career was when I produced the Exhibition ZOV Sportverraeter in Berlin, Germany in 2011, where I developed the concept and mixed portrait photography with video to realize a multimedia installation about the athleteswho escaped from the GDR. Another Highlight was, of course, the invitation to be part of a Yoko Ono exhibition in México, where I presented a collection of black and white portraits that I took in there over the years.

Are there any motives that you find difficult to photograph?

I guess that more than motives, commissions are something that I love and at the same time sometimes need more effort to get a result, because even when you have your own vision, you have to maintain an intimate dialogue with the client and to connect with him or her or it and with their concepts, ideas and intentions and you have to be open to enter this dialog wherever it is, or reject it. For me, photography is kind of a connection with life and all happening around, including dreams, concepts andpeople.

Can you tell us a bit more about your series “Easter Bathers”?

I love the fact that a person´s body is much lighter under water and the outfits of semi-nude bodies are shining andimmersing in their bliss. Mexico city suffers a water crisis since several years andEaster Bathers is a documentary series that was shot during Easter 2012in the artificial free-entrance-beaches, which opened during the Easter holidaysin México City, enabling the city dwellers without possibility to travel tobe in contact with water as a way to be reborn and to rediscover themselves.Unfortunately, these beaches were closed in 2013 and all the bliss and shine ended with the beaches, too. It was important for me to document these memories of the city and also speak about many political issues that the city and the country are passing throughfrom another perspective.