Familia, Rockaway Beach, NY 2020 © Carlos Jaramillo (IG)
Artist Bio
Carlos Jaramillo (b.1988, McAllen, TX) is a fine art and commercial photographer based in Los Angeles, CA. His work has been featured in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, and VICE. Jaramillo is a graduate of School of Visual Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography.
There is something beautiful and tender in the thought of a family coming together to scoop soft mounds of sand into an opening to be in communion with one another. This small ritual performed by humans, to shape the sand into the thing we need it to be is comforting. What I find striking about Jaramillo’s Familia (above) is the tension between what we build and what we have no control over and the synergism between the two. On the ground, la familia makes up one circle. Overtop, the seagulls construct the half of another, so that together, la familia and the seagulls are one. This wholeness, this construction of the cyclical, a starting, ending, and returning to is glorious, it is also painful. For those of us struggling to find our way back, straddling between different worlds, the “return to” can swallow us entirely.
Carlos captures the moments that make me think about the natural and the man-made. In this second image, the familiarity of the circle shape reappears with a larger group of beachgoers. However this time, it is not a flock of seagulls but a towering American flag that constructs another shape, a pyramid. This imagined community (the flag representing America) is not in communion with the beachgoers, there is no unity or wholeness present, only a hierarchy. The contrast between the background of both of these images, one light in Familia, one dark in 4th of July Gathering, reinforces what opportunities, or lack thereof, present themselves when we are in community with ourselves vs the nation-state. Carlos’ practice of working with film in a meditative way and his influences, like Edward Hopper, relate what we can see when we slow down and take a step back.
I asked Carlos to share with us a little more about his photographic history:
Where were you born and raised?
I was born in McAllen, TX. My mother is Mexican and my father is Colombian.
What called you to photography?
I fell into photography by chance. I started taking pictures of my friends when we would go skateboarding and then started taking photo classes at a community college. My teachers made me realize I could make a living being a photographer and that’s when I started taking it more seriously.
What is something unique to your art practice?
I recently started shooting strictly on film again. Shooting film helped my process by slowing me down again and making a photograph became a more meditative process. This also compliments my personality with being a more slow and thoughtful thinker.
Who are some of your influences, artistic or otherwise?
More recently I’ve had painters from LA inspire my work. Judy Baca, Alfonso Gonzales Jr., Ozzie Juarez to name a few. Edward Hopper and Robert Adams were big inspirations in the way I evolved and how I approached photography.
Keep an eye out for Carlos’ upcoming photo book in early 2022.
Wonderful read
❤️❤️ beautiful