Statement

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My photographic work stems from experimentation with monochrome analog imagery and a search for the perceptual limits that surround it. I work with a large-format camera and an 1890 Darlot Paris lens, built in bronze and without a diaphragm, which produces a low-contrast image with a rich tonal range. With it I build a representational imaginary from mostly diffused grays and a limited depth of field.

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This aesthetic, marked by ambiguity, approaches the ominous and departs from the conventions of traditional photography. I am fascinated by the capacity for drawing that photography offers through optics and its possibilities: images from my imaginary appear, diffuse and undefined. This liquid condition, together with my research into the chemical processes of photography, runs through all of my work and creates crossovers from one series to another.

My projects are built around series, each with its own particular system of observation and image composition. In Monumentos, the object of study is the monuments of the city of Santiago, Chile. Removed from their surroundings and their history, the monuments are transformed: they lose their structure by being completely out of focus and dissolve into the white sky, barely held in place by the silver emulsion of the black-and-white film.

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In recent years, my work has centered on the study of wet collodion, a nineteenth-century photographic process that replaced the daguerreotype. I research its chemical composition and its 1850 formulas, and I make my own chemicals, reviving a wet-plate process that ties production to limited time frames. I develop it through workshops where I teach the process and through the production of work: portraits of people and elements of the natural landscape. In ROCA, as in my previous series, collodion operates in monochrome, with an exquisite range of grays and a limited depth of field. It is also an emulsion sensitive to ultraviolet light and insensitive to red, which alters its system of tonal representation. I understand these constraints as an opportunity for experimentation in the contemporary field through a tool from the past. This generates an experience of producing work that belongs to another time and poses new challenges to today's means of production and to the relationships we establish with images in the present.

 

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Bio

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Alfredo Méndez Etchepare (Santiago de Chile, 1970) is a Chilean photographer. He has worked as an advertising photographer since the early 1990s and has taken part in local publishing projects. He holds a degree in Visual Arts from the Faculty of Art of the Universidad Mayor, Santiago de Chile. Since 2014 he has been a founding partner of AMAZONAS Enmarcaciones, a framing business dedicated to photography and visual arts exhibition projects.

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Selected exhibitions and projects

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• 2025 – Artist residency, Festival Cielos del Infinito, Punta Arenas, Tierra del Fuego. Documentary film project El Ojo Salvaje.

• 2022 – Selected for Alternative Processes: Other Ways of Seeing (curators Orestes González and Pierre-Yves Linot), Plaxall Gallery, Culture Lab LIC, Long Island City, New York. Wet plate collodion tintypes (January).

• 2021 – Selected for the International Competition Alternative Processes 2021, Soho Photo Gallery and Griffin Museum. Wet plate collodion ambrotype, digital exhibition (December).

• 2019 – Photobook launch: Menos seis grados hacia el Oeste, risograph printed with hand binding, limited edition.

• 2019 – Solo exhibition Ucronia, D21 Gallery, Santiago de Chile.

• 2014 – Co-author (photographer), Antología visual del libro ilustrado en Chile, Quilombo Ediciones.

• 2013 – Co-author (photographer), Editado en Chile, Quilombo Ediciones.

• 2013 – The Story of the Creativity, See.me group, digital projection, Long Island City, New York, with the project Rotten.

• 2013 – Selected for the 3rd Cycle of National Photography Workshops, Photography Area of the National Council of Culture and the Arts, Santiago de Chile, with the project Cartography.

• 2012 – First place in Latin America, Product Photography category, International Hasselblad USA Contest.

• 2011 – Exhibition at the National Library of Spain, Madrid, with a selection of photographs from the book Editado en Chile.

Cosas que ajusté o que conviene que confirmes:

1. "Ucronia" como muestra individual. El original no dice si fue individual o colectiva. Puse "Solo exhibition", pero solo si lo fue. Si no, déjalo como "Exhibition".

2. Madrid 2011 y el libro de 2013. Dice que en 2011 expusiste fotos del libro Editado en Chile, que aparece publicado en 2013. Puede ser un error de año o que la exposición fuera un adelanto del proyecto. Conviene revisar cuál es la fecha correcta.

3. "Tyntipes". Lo corregí a tintypes. Si eran ferrotipos, es el mismo término, pero confirma que sean tintipos y no ambrotipos como en 2021.

4. "National Library of Madrid". Lo escribí como National Library of Spain, que es su nombre oficial (Biblioteca Nacional de España, con sede en Madrid).

5. "Enmaraciones". Lo corregí a Enmarcaciones. Confirma que ese sea el nombre exacto del negocio.

6. Hasselblad. "First Latin American Place" pasó a First place in Latin America, que es lo que entiendo que quisiste decir.

7. Ubicación de 2013 en Nueva York. Agregué "City" a Long Island City por ser el nombre completo del barrio.