Interview with Veronica Sanchis from Foto-Féminas

We interviewed Veronica Sanchis, founder of Foto-Féminas, which will be part of the projections presented at the SAN JOSÉ FOTO 2016. Veronica spoke to us about what motivated the creation of a Latin-American women photographer’s platform, her thoughts about gender themes, as well as the works that will be projected during the festival.

For starters and in your own words, what is Foto-Féminas? and what are this project’s main objectives?

Foto Féminas It is a platform created to promote through digital and visual Media not only Latin American and Caribbean women photographers, but also those residing in this area.

As objectives, we seek to promote a photographic exchange that encourages a better future for women in photography here in Latin America and the Caribbean. We also look for the dissemination of photographic works, including emerging artists, the ratification of consecrated artists and the collaboration between photographers and photographic organizations. These are the points that we want to continue to develop further through our project.

What was the factor that motivated you to make such a specific platform for Latin American women photographers?

In 2013, I started doing interviewing Latin American and Spanish photographers working on the continent for the Ventana Latina magazine, based in London. By doing this I was able to collect a lot of information about Latin American photographers working in this region. After that I started an internship at the ICP’s (International Center of Photography) library at New York, where I began to discover more contents about Latin America and other entities I didn’t know about. All of this researching process, for both the magazine and in the library, inspired me to create something for myself that would relate to Latin America.

During my research I also began to notice that there wasn’t a space dedicated to women photographers in Latin America nor the Caribbean. I began to notice that much of the information of Latin American photographers, are women who are already widely known and have a longstanding career, but there was little to be heard about current photographers, especially emerging ones, who work with the current topics in Latin America. This moved me to do a project that reflected the work of contemporary women photographers in Latin America.

Photography is a Medium still dominated by men, in your opinion, what are the biggest difficulties a woman photographer has to face? Do you think that in Latin America is even more difficult (than Europe or the United States)?

I think the biggest difficulty is that a woman thinks she can’t be a photographer due this gender inequality inside the industry.

First of all, I think being a photographer anywhere is difficult today. It is difficult to live from this profession when work is unappreciated and the industry does not have the same budget it used to have.

I don’t know if it’s harder to be a photographer in Latin America than in the US or Europe, but I do believe that the women photographers in Latin America can achieve has been underestimated in the industry, but I think this is due to sexist ideas, such as that a woman photographer can’t deal with difficult nor risky situations, in the case of photojournalism and documentary photography.

If I confess to you that in my experience as a curator for Photo Féminas so far, something that has caught my attention is people asking me if there are women photographers in Latin America. Of course there are, it’s just that they haven’t been included in the photographic dialogue, but all of this is changing.

The theme of this years festival is gender. What do you think can be the contribution of photography to discussions on this topic?

For me one of the great virtues of festivals is that there is a space that brings together broad contents to learn, consider and reflect on, in that way we reflect on what we know and what we have learned. Festivals give back much to their communities and to their participants.

For example, the idea that Cristina de Middel had, for the curating of the festival, about bringing projects that reflect men in different domestic roles, as well as beauty is a good way to show the gender inequality in society. These projects will open new discussions and interpretations of the gender realities, where some will agree and others won’t, but that’s part of each one’s personal growth and reflection process, which are vital for us to understand each other.

Can you comment on the projection that you will present in San Jose Photo.

With this projection we seek to bring our audience to a re-interpretation of the modern and contemporary Latin America from a female perspective, which we present in this festival through personal, conceptual, documentary and news stories.

In the projection all of the visual stories, told by thirteen women photographers presented by Foto Féminas, have been submitted during 2015 and 2016. There is also a mix of emerging women photographers from different places and nationalities, some consecrated, some emergent. Through all of these stories, we travel our continent and seek to learn something new about our neighbors in each story.

What are the future goals that the platform Foto-Féminas has?

The first thing is to continue the project and keep filing photographic works by various women photographers. That’s why I keep an open call in the webpage. Second, is to continue providing a space for emerging photographers,Third, would be to continue taking the women photographer’s work to more festival and / or entities that welcome photography.