Year / 2015

British novelist Geoff Dyer noted in his book The Ongoing Moment, that Edward Hopper "could, with some justification, claim to be the most influential American photographer of the twentieth century -even though he did not take any photographs".

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Hopper and his wife Josephine traveled to Mexico in 1943 looking for new scenes and themes to paint. That summer, they settled in Saltillo, from where he painted four watercolors from a rooftop. He painted two more in Monterrey before returning to New York.

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Rooftops is a photographic project based on that visit and consists of a series of photographs taken in Saltillo, from the rooftops where Edward Hopper painted his works

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With this series, I seek to understand the work that Hopper did in Saltillo. I followed his steps, traced the rooftops, places, and views, read the letters he sent to friends and colleagues about his trips to Mexico, and photographed from the same places, with the same compositions, using the story of Hopper as a starting point to create also a new, contemporary story, inspired by his vision and style.

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If art seeks to recreate reality to understand better, with this project I propose to recreate art to understand it, to reveal it.

In these photographs, the exercise becomes endogenous and the repetition reveals details that are not perceived in the original. In the end I decide to visit other spaces and portray compositions Hopper could have chosen.

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The result is the reinterpretation of my place of origin, a mystery in known space, but also the understanding through paraphrasing a key creator of the 20th century. 

 

For the spectator, it is a peephole to a Chinese box. It is an invitation to disarm the matryoshka that the intricate itinerary of art and its travelers have armed.

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