Destiny Mata, who was born in San Antonio, Texas and raised in New York City, has been making photographic work for over 15 years. You might know her from the punk scene, which she’s photographed for over 8 years. But Destiny wouldn’t consider herself just a music photographer, “my process is me, I’m living my life.” While you’re sure to find images of punks of color on her instagram, you’ll also find images of protests for affordable housing or her students, “I photograph the things that I live, experience, and care about.”
As a student of photojournalism at La Guardia Community College, Destiny felt the pull of faraway places that made up the pages of National Geographic. Her professor Scott Sternbach, the now Director of Photography at La Guardia, encouraged her to document the stories in her own backyard. That’s when the “light bulb” went off.
“Destiny Mata wants you to come home, whatever that means for you.”
On school assignment, Mata was instructed to look over the work of a chosen photographer on the now-defunct New York Times Lens Blog. The work of Serbian photographer, Boogie, and his series on gangs in New York City public housing caught her attention. The work resonated with Mata who had grown up in New York City public housing, but it wasn’t entirely representative of her experience, so Destiny decided to turn the camera on herself.
The “chaos” in Mata’s self-portraits, barely contained within the frame of the photograph, reveal some of the most fragile truths about the human experience. Amidst the graffitied walls and the scattered clothes, you might focus on the lone sock at the edge of the frame, and think to yourself what it means for us to perform this daily ritual of covering and uncovering. You might look at the drawing on the wall and remember what it was like to be young and unafraid of creating something permanent, not so easy to erase or cover up.
In the follow-up to “Creating Under Chaos,” Destiny traces iterations of herself. Despite being made 15 years apart, her ability to gaze upon the camera, jaw relaxed, remains unchanged. In the centermost portrait, where Destiny is the oldest among the other images, her long hair fills the frame. Reminiscent of Frida Kahlo’s Self Portrait in Medallion, Mata encloses herself in a tapestry of her own making.
What felt odd to me at first, the left topmost frame [the writing on the wall and the bed] came into focus when I studied the bottom right portrait. Destiny’s decision to photograph both herself and the writing out of view of the camera, behind her, demonstrates a commitment to documenting every facet of self. Both one’s self-portrait as well as one’s inner thoughts as an extension of self. Taken together, “Creating Under Chaos Pt. 2” becomes a dizzying spiral of multitudes.
Destiny’s work is a lot about excavation and examination. Like the punk scene she is drawn to, her self-portraits take you into her inner world. There is a large sense of spontaneous carefree energy in them but also big overarching questions about the world we live in and how we relate to one another. Most of all, I am impressed by Mata’s commitment to the return, a return to self, to community, and to the stories in her own backyard.
Destiny Mata wants you to come home, whatever that means for you.
Where and how do we make ourselves a home? It’s a lot like finding your voice as an artist I think. It’s a struggle, there are ups and downs, and like all things, it’s harder for some people than it is for others. There’s a lot that we can’t control, but that’s the beautiful thing about self-expression, we can decide to set sail on the journey that is finding our voice whenever we so choose.