MoMA welcomes Mexican artist Sandra Blow: ‘I add salsa to the photos. Salsa that’s spicy’ 

Sandra Blow uses her long gel nails to brush back her hair, which constantly obscures her gaze. The Mexican photographer says that, when she started taking pictures, what was considered “beautiful” followed a normative pattern. “They were very blond models, with blue eyes. You didn’t see Latin models; you didn’t see brown skin.”

“I’ve always been the way I am,” she shrugs. “Tattooed, always a little outside the norm. And, well, my friends are like that, too. I’m not going to get along with the fresas (“strawberries,” slang for snobs) from Polanco (an affluent neighborhood in Mexico City). What would I do there?” she asks rhetorically.

This is how she began to become interested in different esthetics, documenting queerness, nightlife, and sexual expression. In September of this year, the Mexican photographer will bring 19 of her photographs to the Lines of Belonging exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, one of the world’s great cultural venues. And before that, in August, she plans to present Sandra Blow XV, a photobook compiling her 15 years of experience.

She sits on one of the vintage sofas that decorate a central Mexico City café, where classical music plays loudly. The space seems to be designed for young people who want a latte, or for septuagenarians looking for a café con leche. There, Sandra Villavicencio, 34, reflects on the exact moment she began to accept that her work was good. She’s thought about it on other occasions, especially while preparing her photobook… but she hasn’t been able to come up with an answer.

Born in the municipality of Atizapán de Zaragoza, about a 45-minute drive from Mexico City, she tells EL PAÍS that she studied advertising at university and felt a connection to her camera from the very beginning. “My teacher motivated me a lot. He told me, ‘You have a good eye.’ When the semester ended, he told me to do whatever I wanted, but to not stop taking pictures,” she recalls.

Shortly before graduating, she started out as a food photographer for a large Mexican publishing house, where she worked for various magazines. Her first professional photographs were of cuisine, spaces, and chefs. She also had her first exposure to nightlife when she worked for the entertainment section of one of those magazines. “I took pictures in bars, crowded places, with music and people dancing. The time [I spent working] at magazines was very useful to me. To this day, I really like taking pictures of food.” She combined that work with taking pictures of girls who caught her eye at parties or on the street, at a time when her budget didn’t yet allow her to hire agency models.

Classical music, a pause and Palestine

About 10 years ago, when she was already established in the field of photography, “suicide girls” became fashionable in Mexico City. These girls don’t fit into any typical subculture: they’re often associated with the goth and punk genres.

Around that time, Veracruz-based photographer Alan Yee began the I love cheap hotel project, which he defined as “naked girls, luxury hotels, and scandalous poses.” This erotic approach quickly attracted Blow. “Many photographers were doing more sexual things, nastier, dirtier […] I loved taking alternative photos with my tattooed girls. Obviously, esthetics change, everything changes… and then, at some point, I also started noticing this absence of brown skin, of fat bodies, of people who weren’t two meters tall,” she notes.

Blow believes that her work also supports the LGBTQ+ community in times like the present, where certain extremist tendencies — such as those expressed by U.S. President Donald Trump, who, back in January, denied the existence of trans people — have permeated some sectors of society. And she also highlights the impact of the LGBTQ+ community. “It’s always been a community that’s been very aware of social issues. Now, with what’s happening in Palestine, I notice it’s one of the communities that’s the most attentive, that’s boycotting the most. Many people make stupid comments like: ‘But if you go to Palestine and you’re gay, they’re going to kill you.’ That’s something that, for example, the [LGBTQ+] community isn’t paying attention to. It doesn’t matter. Right now, it’s not about [us]. First, we have to try to stop them from killing [the Palestinians] and then we’ll see.”

Classical music continues to play loudly in the background. “I feel totally intellectual,” she jokes. Blow talks about her work with different media outlets. Then, suddenly, she cuts off the interview. “Um… I have to do something before I forget. I’m working on the acknowledgments for the book.”

She grabs her phone. Types for a bit. Then, she returns to the conversation.

“So, I tried to write articles talking about these topics that interested me; things about the community, feminism, the marches. I showed my mom one of my articles. [That’s when] she understood what a trans person is,” Blow explains.

She admits that she always likes to use a film camera. It’s easily transportable and allows her to be spontaneous… and she doesn’t have to risk her digital camera.

“If anything happens to it, I’m dead. But you have to be practical; you’re not going to [be able to document] a performance [or] a concert with film,” she points out.

Blow almost never goes out to look for spaces that look good in her photography. She allows room for improvisation, but she still pays attention to certain locations when she’s walking down the street or riding in a taxi. “I see a place and say, ‘This spot is great.’ Then, I shoot it and become obsessed,” she explains. It’s this spontaneity that has allowed photographs like Yin and Yang to emerge, taken in 2020 at a nightclub in downtown Mexico City. In it, Paco Santander, a drag queen from the capital, and another man pose. A few seconds earlier, they hadn’t even met. “I think [the importance of the photographer and the model is] 50-50, because if the model doesn’t let themselves go — if they’re stiff — it’s probably not going to be a good photo. My job is always to make their lives easier, right?” she muses.

When asked how she would define her photographic style, Blow responds: “Latina, sexy, boombastic, glitter, flow. I don’t know. I think it’s like a shiny documentary or something. Like a documentary with glitter.”

There’s something very Mexican about her photography. “I think it’s the colors,” she notes. “The people I choose, the locations… who knows? No one has ever [said] that before. I have no idea. I add salsa to the photos. Salsa that’s spicy.”

Blow’s photographs that will be exhibited at MoMA — and which can now be viewed on the museum’s official website — join those belonging to other artists from around the world who are also participating in the exhibition. Three more Mexican artists are part of the show: Tania Franco Klein, Francisca Rivero-Lake and Carla Verea. Lines of Belonging seeks to bring together artists from cities that have existed as “centers of life, creativity, and communion for longer than the nation states in which they are presently situated.”

The opportunity leaves Blow feeling bittersweet: she’s happy to have landed at the major gallery, but melancholic about still not resonating with the public in Mexico. “I think I’ll believe it [when I actually] have that display in front of me [...] But life goes on: the rain, the depression, Mexico City, the Third World. I hope that, above all, [this exhibit] will be a door to a greater appreciation for [my work] in my country.”

When she’s asked which image she’ll remember the most, out of all of her photographs that are set to arrive at MoMa, she falls silent. She searches for the photograph on her phone, appearing to caress the screen. Finally, she pulls up a picture from 2017 — Allan Balthazar — in which the young artist appears dressed as a virgin, holding a bouquet of flowers. “[I’ll remember this one the most] because of who he is, because of the moment in my life and in the photograph. He’s a friend who passed away. I love him deeply. This would be it, without a doubt.”

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