Itzel Alejandra: Life Is Tough... But So Are You
Itzel Alejandra is a Mexican-American interdisciplinary artist from El Paso, TX currently living in Brooklyn, NY. Her work is directly inspired by the ambivalence of being raised in a bordertown and longing to unravel the long complex history that makes up northern Mexico and Texas. Through her media and sculptural ceramic work, she explores memory formation through the visual history of the border region. Itzel’s collaborative portraits and videos seek to deconstruct identity formation, personal aspirations and the quest of belonging. She has documented the lives and stories of the Latine community+ in New York and Texas working for major media outlets such as NPR, Vice, Elle, and Remezcla. Her work has been featured in Vogue, Forbes, Nylon and Musée Magazine and has been exhibited at Pace Gallery, Christie’s NY, Greenwich House, Mexic-Arte Museum, among others.
IL: Hi Itzel! Tell me, How did you get started in photography?
IA: I started as a "photographer" when I was really young, honestly. I always liked taking pictures of my friends, family, and dogs. When I was around ten years old, I asked my mom to buy me a camera, so we went to Walgreens, and she bought me a blue 35mm camera for $20, and that's where it all began.
IL: And what was it like for you growing up on the border between El Paso and Ciudad Juarez?
IA: I was born in El Paso, but until I was nine years old, I lived in Juárez, and then we moved to El Paso, where I lived until I was 18. Life on the border is complex. Personally, I think I grew up very quickly, maybe because of the situation between my parents or my constant search to be independent and very curious. I have very fond memories of parties, barbecues, weddings, quinceañeras where all my family and friends enjoyed music and dancing. And I also have other memories where I found out my dad was in jail or fighting with my mom because she wouldn't let me go to Juárez with my friends in high school due to the situation in 2007.
IL: I started with that question because in your first photobook Life is tough… but so are you, it seems to me that you created a visual essay about this. Could you share with us how this project came about?
IA: Since I moved to Brooklyn, NY, I started to see Texas and the border in a different way. Being here, I realized that many people don't know where El Paso is, even though it’s a place that frequently appears in the news and is visited by politicians as part of their election campaigns. Little by little, with each visit to the border for the holidays or to visit my family, I started taking photos of my favorite places, taking pictures with my mom, brother, stylist, etc., and that's where the idea of making a book about what I know and love about where I'm from was born. For me, it was also a reflection on the visual history of the border and figuring out how to tell my story through photos in a deeper way. I think with this book I brought many of my traumas out to dance (haha), but it was something necessary for healing.
IL: Traumas out to dance... tell me more!
IA: Much of my professional work as a photographer has been mostly journalistic, so this book, being so introspective, forced me to sit with myself to understand my story for the first time. There were many personal things, like my daddy issues, the difficulty of growing up with few resources, and my relationship with masculinity, the matriarchy, etc.
IL: It's a very intimate and identity-driven book for those of us who have lived here. In the beautiful introduction, you write that many people wouldn’t be interested in being here if it weren’t for the fact that it’s a border, and besides families, you mention capitalists, braceros, military personnel, cartels, refugees… but visually, why aren’t they represented here?
IA: I believe they’re all subtly present.
IL: Noted. I just finished the preproduction of the photobook Mexican Shoppers, and I found the process of co-playing / co-thinking / co-organizing the sequencing fascinating. I’m curious, how did that sequencing process go for you?
IA: That’s great, congratulations! During the pandemic, I started organizing photos I took on various trips, pictures of my family and friends, plants, objects, etc., and from that, several diptychs emerged, which became “photo diaries.” I think the process of looking at the photos and trying to find their sequence was very intuitive, considering the composition, colors, or personal context of the photos.
In this book, I worked with Jaime Nuñez from Terminal Ediciones to formulate the sequence. Finding meaning using the diptychs with another person was interesting because you can see something so personal to you become personal to someone else or see how it’s interpreted, and that’s beautiful. I really enjoyed the process because it felt like letting the photos flow on their own.
IL: Letting them flow, how beautiful! Were there any diptychs that you didn’t expect to communicate with each other?
IA: The ones that come to mind right now are the two at the end of the book. The Cesar Chavez Academy in El Paso is an alternative discipline school—basically, they send you there if you’re misbehaving in the other high schools in the Ysleta district. Well, this photo says, “Life is Tough But So Are You” on the marquee, and the next photo is of the sky during sunset. I think this, as the book’s ending, questions what is and what could be.
IL: There are some hands holding a bunch of letters—how did that photo come about?
IA: That photo was one of the last ones I took last year before the book was released. The hands are my mom's, and I took the photo in the backyard of the house where I grew up. The letters are from my dad when he was in prison for eleven years. He would send me lots of letters with cartoons because it was right when I was eleven or twelve that he went to prison, so his way of communicating joy was through colors, cartoons, and designs.
IL: Incredible. If you could ask yourself one question about this photobook, what would it be?
IA: Why isn’t the book longer? Haha.
IL: And why isn’t it?
IA: Time, resources haha. But this book is the first of many (I hope).
IL: Of course! You presented this book at the Printed Matter Book Fair in New York and also shared it with us here at the NOVA Gallery in El Paso. For those who didn’t get a copy, how can they obtain one?
IA: They can find it on the Terminal Ediciones website: https://terminalediciones.com/
IL: Thank you, Itzel!
IA: My pleasure, Ingrid!