I love images, but not of myself.

A short reflection on what happened after seeing myself on video in front of thousands of followers.

Hola!

If you have been reading me for a while you have probably noticed that I have a big obsession with images — especially images of people. People on the subway, people wearing weird stuff, hot people, glamorous people and in general, people who are intentionally or unintentionally doing everything I am afraid of doing, even when the only audience is myself. I think one of the reasons I love being a photographer is because I always have an excuse to not be in front of any camera — to not be exposed and seen. For example, every time people want a photo with me in a social gathering or after a proper photoshoot, I step away and charmingly avoid being in the photo by simply saying: “No! Let me take a photo of you guys instead, I know where the good light is.” And of course, because people are selfish, 90% of the time they nod and silently agree, because it’s better to have a pretty photo of themselves than a bad photo with a guy they can see often in real life. Now, let me clarify: they are right — I am very good at my job! But the main reason I don’t want to be in the photo is not because I’m generous and I want them to have a great photo. No, the real reason is that I always feel like I look terrible in photos! Hearing a little click pointing at me doesn’t sound like a click, it sounds like a guy with my voice screaming: You’re fat. Where’s your beard? Your hair is not perfectly messy. You should have worn the cotton shirt and not the polyester one! The list of everything that goes through my head when I’m in front of a camera is long, but as I said, I have learned to avoid it as much as I can. Until I can’t.

This post is a detailed description of why I decided to write about this now, and why my therapist thinks it is important for me to learn how to be ok with the way I look. Yes, this is 100% homework from my Thursday therapy session and I like being a good apprentice, so I’m just doing this to get an A+ in therapy and see if something good comes out of it.

On July 4th of this year, I was invited to do a podcast with Samantha Tams, one of the founders of the only and most important Fashion Summit for Latin America.  She and her co-founder Estefania Lacayo are people that I admire dearly and they both have given me the opportunity to photograph some of the most important figures in fashion for the past 5 years. I rarely say yes to interviews because (here we go) I always felt like my voice never changed, and every time I speak, it sounds like I’m ready for my mom to pick me up from elementary school. However, this invitation came at a time when two important things were happening in my life at the same time. 1. I was slowly starting to get out of a mild depression and 2. I had been writing this newsletter for a while, so I thought this could be a good opportunity to promote it and have a bigger platform so people could understand what Im trying to say.

I was right!

And even though realizing that the recording studio also had a film camera made me very nervous, the conversation felt great. I said what I wanted to say, Samantha asked really good questions and I realized that not only do I feel comfortable with my opinions again, but, finally at 35 years old, I am learning to be OK with tension and with disagreeing with people I like or people that I work with. We were there for an hour. This was the beginning of the summer so the weather was hot, I was sweaty, I wore functional clothes because again, I didn’t know I was going to be on camera, but none of this seemed to matter. By the time I left, it all felt like I was back in the game, I was back at being that 13 year old middle school student who used to love public speaking and signing Ave Marias in front of an all male catholic school where most of us were still trapped in the ordinary.

But two days ago, a little teaser for the podcast came out. I had partially forgotten about the whole camera-in-front-of-me-situation, so by the time I saw the first frame with my whole face, my whole voice and half of my body in it, I immediately turned off Instagram.

I panicked.

The whole mysterious persona I had been building for the past 15 years of my career had disappeared in a matter of seconds. The guy obsessed with wearing exclusively all black or all white to be “interesting” was not on the frame. The no-photos-of-me-on-social-media policy had just been thrown in the garbage, and the guy who wanted people to see that he knew that wearing a Marni shirt instead of a GAP one would instantly made him look smarter than anyone else decided to dress like a “Basic Dude” simply because it was hot outside!!!

Thank god I had therapy that afternoon. The first 30 minutes of my session where more or less everything you have read so far. The first thing my therapist asked me to do was watch the video with him (TERRIFYING) and then tell him everything I saw on the video that I didn’t like (in other words: The Things You Missed).

This is what I saw:

Insanity! But, hey! I really want to make my therapist proud, and the video of the interview is already on Youtube, so there is nothing to do but understand and accept a version of me that can be less crafted and less pretentious. Plus it’s only fair to give myself the same random and critical observations I do to the unauthorized photos of the people I see on the subway.

Speaking of that. Here is a graphic example of everything I have to work for after this very vulnerable experience:

Yes it would be nice to have this type of body:

But I what I really want is to have this type of confidence:

Chao!

Andrés

Ps: Here is the link of the podcast (for Spanish speakers) — if you feel like listening to my “gay voice”!