© Cristian Ordóñez from the series 'Frequency'

What about the places where you have grown up. Any memories?

Cristian Ordóñez (CO): Plenty of memories rise at different times, some good others not so much, but they’ve all influenced me in a variety of ways. I was born and raised in Santiago, Chile, during the dictatorship era of Pinochet. For the most part, I have good memories and a good childhood, but looking back, I understand that my parents didn’t get involved much in politics and that perhaps triggered us to have a tranquil life, within everything that was going on that affected no matter what everyone's lives. When I got older I remembered my surroundings and understood how politics affected our way of life, as well the ones around us, what I saw on the streets and in the news, what it really meant to live in a dictatorship and how it influenced the way we all lived and saw the world. In 1988 when I was 11, I moved to Christchurch, New Zealand, a place that allowed me to see the world a bit differently and opened my eyes to various cultures and art. It is not that NZ was a place where many things were happening but moving from Chile in that era to Christchurch felt like the world was accessible in a way that felt harder for me back home. After a few years, moving back to Chile, arriving after the dictatorship was over, in democracy, was like arriving in a new and fresher country, a place where things felt flourishing, and even more in my teenage years while I was transitioning from High School to University. This process provided me with alternative ways of seeing and understanding the world more in line with what I experienced in New Zealand, but obviously through a South American sociological system.

© Cristian Ordóñez from the series 'Frequency'

© Cristian Ordóñez from the series 'Frequency'

What about photography, when did you step into the visual world?

CO: I believe it was in my early teenage years. I was living in Christchurch, New Zealand where I took visual art classes. Photography wasn’t something I practiced then, but it was when I started to consume visual art and music, to experience and understand the cities on my own. Then at University, while studying graphic design, in photography classes is where I got my first film camera and started to use the darkroom for the first time. I photographed just as another way to explore my visual interests, with no formal intentions. I was interested in several structures that related somehow to graphic design, vernacular graphics, typography in architectural structures, architecture in general, and the vernacular of the city. Over the years I feel that I’ve come back to shooting similar things, but the understanding and point of view have changed.

© Cristian Ordóñez from the series 'Frequency'

How do you cope with fast interconnections, instant sharing, the evolution of the medium? How this is affecting your practice and vision of photography?

CO: This theme has lately been a constant point of conversation with my peers and friends, and I have to say that I always struggle with instant sharing and platforms. The pandemic has increased the anxiety social media creates. The constant thought of taking more time, slowing down, increases. Most of us seem to have a regular idea of making ourselves relevant, through proving we are doing things and being successful (a very subjective term). I have gone this route as well as many, and several times I feel it is the wrong path, but the medium sadly currently works that way.

Even though I have discovered and learned so much with fast interconnections, sometimes I realized there is pressure rather than joy. We don’t need to be relevant all the time. We just need to be and enjoy that process. I think that honesty will bring more interesting things. I am hoping to find that once again, I have to say that the fast medium sometimes takes that away.

© Cristian Ordóñez from the series 'Frequency'

© Cristian Ordóñez from the series 'Frequency'

© Cristian Ordóñez from the series 'Frequency'

How would you describe your approach to the medium?

CO: This one is a hard one to address I would say. I feel that my approach changes constantly, as it depends on what I am doing. But the main approach is probably the idea of walking. I plan to go to an area, sometimes with a very loose knowledge of the route I’ll take as it always changes along the way, and walk for long periods of time using my observation to drive the decision I make.

© Cristian Ordóñez from the series 'Frequency'

Your series 'Frequency' was selected for Urbanautica Institute Awards 2020. Can you briefly introduce what motivated you to start this project?

CO: I don’t like to follow briefs with most of my personal work, I try to leave that for commercial work, I rather follow loose ideas or interests so I let observation just trigger that perception, what I capture becomes both subconscious and conscious decisions.

When the pandemic started in 2020, commercial work stopped for three months. I saw many local labs pausing or taking longer to get processing done. I needed to keep on doing personal work to satisfy the need I had in me, so there were three parameters that I set up for myself: I started to go for one to two hour walks around my area to rediscover my surroundings. Sometimes I also went a bit further in the region; Second, to avoid bigger expenses I decided to start shooting mostly black and white films and process these in my studio at home. Third, the concept I have been working with evolved on its own, I realized the things I was shooting and how my mood affected what I was shooting. After more than a year I continue in the same series of photographs, for me, 'Frequency' is not specifically about the pandemic, however, it has been created during this time as it increased that notion of understanding how we live, the urban infrastructure, and our relationship to nature.

© Cristian Ordóñez from the series 'Frequency'

© Cristian Ordóñez from the series 'Frequency'

Tell us about the process and methodology behind 'Frequency'? What were the main challenges?

CO: The process has been very straightforward, always shooting with the same medium format camera, same film, processing with the same chemicals, and scanning on the same scanner. A process that, as the current times work, has been monotonous and slow, but very rewarding.
The main challenge has been me. I tend to get bored quickly with the things I do.

There is a strong empathic relationship with space. As if I wanted to touch it, make sense of it. It's all about your surroundings in the city of Ontario. How has your perception of these places changed?

CO: I remember moving for the first time to this region in 2008 from Santiago. Everything felt fresh, new, exciting and I felt a constant sense of wonder. That interest went away for several years. I tend to travel outside of the region or country to create interesting photographs. The pandemic forced me to stay in the same place and I think the need to take photographs opened up my perception of this place. It helped me understand a different point of view, even of things that I have shot before, but I look at them now in a different way.

The feelings of desolation, anxiety, and uncertainty emerge from the series? How do you feel this project stands out from your other previous works?

CO: There is a relationship between them. At least I see it in me, perhaps not everyone that knows my work will. For me it still relates somehow with the idea of memory, of being an outsider in a new place, moving in between countries. But they also contain a sense of time, change, and place, concepts that are always present for me. In these photographs, I see the current state of things and even though I intend them to have certain subjectivity, they speak to a more specific time and location.

© Cristian Ordóñez from the series 'Frequency'

'Frequency' is also a work about the city. A customized environment built to satisfy all our needs, infinite pleasure, as well stated by Mónica Salinero Rates. Yet the pandemic seems to have undermined this model. Many people felt suffocated in the city, dreamed of open spaces, nature. Can you comment on this?

CO: Ontario and Canada, in general, have a lot of lands and open space, and I think we are privileged to be in a place where even though there is a pandemic we can escape to nature for mental and physical benefit. Understanding that benefit and our surroundings, I kept on perceiving anxiety, apathy, depression, and other feelings in family and friends, feelings you can even sense sometimes in the streets. I guess the problems that many have been facing all over the world.

© Cristian Ordóñez from the series 'Frequency'

Most human beings get used to rhythms and forms of life that are actually guided by socio-economic systems and structures, forcing our schedules, the way we move, how we do it, what we eat, when we do it, how we inform ourselves, etc. If the system does not work as we are used to, different problems or challenges arise. The socio-economic structures generate differences in cities and therefore differences in life that have been pronounced these years. These photographs cover these themes in a subjective and sometimes abstract way, always from an observational point of view to the environment and avoiding the human being himself in the frame.

You are also working to combine the visual project with an audio setting. How and why?

CO: Justin Pape is a Toronto artist and a very good friend. We have long conversations about various topics and of course what each one of us is working on. We share each other's work and discuss our process. We both walk around the city and capture our surroundings in a very similar manner. Justin mixes field recordings with his own musical improvisations and the result creates an atmosphere that aligns well with 'Frequency'. The first time I heard what he shared was while I was working on these photographs, listening to his work while looking at my photographs placed me in real situations while making work. Things aligned and we decided to collaborate.

I like to think that the work can have different arms. I hope 'Frequency' can be in a publication one day, but it is also part of an impromptu musical and field recording process by artist Justin Pape. On this project, I made 10 silver gelatine prints used as covers housed within a small sculpture created by Justin, constructed from debris collected from daily walks in Toronto, Justin's daily coffee grounds, and his hair grown during this year. In the future, if it becomes an exhibition, the music will be in the background to support the mood of the space. And on my website, I have been experimenting with an archive of photographs and field recordings in the background. It doesn’t have to be shown in the same way everywhere and it can shift and vary.

Photography is an effective way of relating to physical space. To seek the sense of places. Your works reflect this possibility but also the opportunity to ask questions about the future. They are like question marks that undermine objectivity ... What do you pursue through photography? Today perhaps we need to learn to read images differently, but also to understand their potential?

CO: I always seek for the reader to find their own interpretations of the photographs as well. I never intend them to be 100% clear and easy to read. Some might seem easy as many are simple places we see everyday, but I hope the context, or dialogue with the other photographs, could trigger different meanings. Like music, literature, or poetry, I like the subjectivity photography can provide. However, there are obviously also questions that arise in these photographs, questions that I am not answering or think that everyone has. It is my point of view towards how I see things developing around me and what I see that could be an interesting photograph. In the same way, I intend to cover my anxiety through photography, I intend to communicate that feeling in the society around me through them as well.

I think reading images differently depends on the context. There is so much work out there that it depends on what those images are saying and what they are expressing. I think there is a space for many voices.

© Cristian Ordóñez from the series 'Frequency'

LINKS

Cristian Ordóñez (website)
Justin Pape (website)
Urbanautica Institute Awards 2020