Yesenia Santillan
Yesenia Santillan is a Texas native born and raised in Fort Worth that strongly embraces her family roots from San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico. After serving in the Marine Corps for 4 years, she turned to photography and is now a senior at the University of Texas at Arlington, May 2017. She uses her experiences from her wedding photography business as well as events and the people that impact her everyday life as inspiration for her artistic work.
Homage to Our Fathers
"This series is about our fathers and the way we view them. Growing up, dad was dad. However, when I was shooting this series, every time I stepped in to my pose and into that new location, I connected with my dad in a different way. I didn’t feel like dad. I felt like Martin, the 16-year-old boy in a new world surrounded by new experiences. I felt like I was 16 years old again, you know that feeling of being invincible to society. The series is about the connection that is lost and sometimes never found with our parents, we know that at some point they were kids, teens and young adults as ourselves but we never really know, we never really feel it. Thirty years later after my father had taken those photos of himself, I stood there, his child at 26 years old feeling invincible. We all have a legacy that our parents leave us, big or small, but we don’t all know where it began. I got to stand in it."
