Transcript

Cinthia Jaimes 0:07 It was just one of those photos that you have a new career that just brings you joy, and reminds you that, although this is definitely a job now, it’s something that we’re very fortunate to do. Because we get to create something that is always going to be a little bit better than we even anticipated being.

Mónika 0:32  Welcome to Our Latina Lens Podcast where we elevate work and stories of accomplished Latina and Latine photographers in the U.S. I’m your host Mónika, and this podcast is part of our wider Our Latina Lens community. In today’s episode, portrait and boudoir photographer, Cinthia Jaimes, known as Cin, shares three of her significant images. These images represent different milestones in Cinthia’s creative journey. The images include a path not taken, and how she found genres that allowed her to live her values in a different way than she expected. Be sure to listen to episode six, where she talks about her journey and creative process.

Mónika 1:16  Image tours are an opportunity for photographers to share some of their most significant images with you and take you behind the scenes. This can include why or how they made the image its personal significance and or the social or political context of the image. I hope you enjoy Cinthia’s image tour, you can see the images described by clicking on the link in the show notes in your podcast player, or go to our website at ourlatinalens.com/podcast to see these images. There you can also access a transcript links to Cinthia’s work. And if you haven’t yet, please sign up for our newsletter.

Mónika 2:00  A content warning. The first image tour includes discussion of gun violence and racial trauma. Now, let’s hear from Cinthia.

Cinthia Jaimes  2:20 This photo was taken during the Dallas Black Lives Matter protest on July 2016. This was one of the last protests I attended. And definitely one of the last protests I photographed. I remember the energy in the air felt like nothing I had experienced before. When I was driving up to the protest, the crowds were really so large, there was police everywhere. There was half a dozen helicopters in the air. It was a hot July, Texas day. I remember it being such a scorching day that day, that you knew people had to be pissed as hell to be out in that heat. And that their message was so important and could not wait for the sun to go down. People were out there in the heat in the middle of the week. Just trying to grieve trying to come together to share their frustration with the others and let their voices be heard. They didn’t want to be silenced anymore. There was a lot of chanting going on that day, you could hear from close by you could hear folks having conversations to just a choir of chanting on all sides of people grieving and frustrated, because they just wanted to be seen as humans that deserved peace that didn’t deserve violence that didn’t deserve. They wanted to be seen as people that deserve second chances are the benefit of that benefit of the doubt, like so many of us experience instead of just being assumed to be guilty and to be executed for it. There’s there’s just so much lack of grace. You could feel people’s pain, you could hear people’s pain and their voices as they chanted the frustration of having to be here again, having to be here like our ancestors were here in different ways of trying to convince others that they were just as human as we are.

Cinthia Jaimes 4:44  There was just so much pain in the air. All the pain that folks were feeling leading up to this protest. Pain that you has been passed down and constantly triggered for generations. And being a non-Black person in the Black Lives Matter protest and experiencing a pain, but also knowing that my, what the sadness I had to experience doesn’t compare. It was overwhelming. It’s like it’s tuest sense. By the time I took this photo, we were about to begin marching. And there were hundreds, if not 1000 people there, it definitely felt like there were more people than I could count. There was so much that I couldn’t process that day. You’re feeling the pain in the air, from people’s sadness, from their grieving, rom their frustration in anger, you are dealing with the disorganization of having a large crowd of people and trying to direct everyone everywhere. It felt overwhelming and overstimulating, and I remember, in my own anxiousness, I looked up, and almost intuitively brought my camera to my eye, and shot this photo, this woman whose face I don’t think I ever got to see, but she’s holding the poster above her head. And it reads, “To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity,” by Nelson Mandela.

Cinthia Jaimes  5:15 I remember, it just felt like one of those moments of realization that it was such a simple statement. And there was so true, and yet we had folks that didn’t understand it, they couldn’t grasp it. And I felt so many emotions, because we were there grieving the loss of two Black men due to police brutality, we were there mourning as a community, trying to have our voices heard. I was there trying to photograph respectfully. And I just remember feeling so helpless, almost, because there was just so much pain that one person could not heal.

Cinthia Jaimes  6:53 I decided to turn the photo into black and white because it felt like it could immortalize what everyone was feeling. And the fact that this wasn’t the first time that people found themselves protesting trying to convince others of their own humanity, and that they were worthy of justice, just like everyone else. It feels like it’s something that the Black community has had to face for decades and centuries. As a photographer, I’ve just remembered that I didn’t want to see the blue sky in the background. Like having color almost felt like a distraction from the emotions that people were feeling that day.

Cinthia Jaimes  8:20 This ended up being the last protest that I have photographed because it was towards the end of this protest, where a shooting erupted. And I was unfortunately very close to the fire. And it just made me realize that a lot of photojournalism is going around, documenting pain, because unfortunately, in a lot of media, that is what most folks see or can relate to, because it does trigger strong emotions. I am a firm believer that this pain and these stories deserve to be shared. I just came to the realization that day that I was a little too fragile to be the one sharing them.

Cinthia Jaimes 9:02  But I still wanted to be a voice for my community. So this protest helped me shift into portraiture, which is honestly what began my journey with boudoir. So I’m very grateful for the opportunity to have attended and to have photographed and as painful as it was to have experienced that. Because that pivot ultimately, is what led to the career that I have now. And even though I am no longer photographing these kinds of events, I still do everything I can to help those communities have their voices heard, and to be an ally and a sister and a friend and be of service to help bring justice to any injustice that comes their way. I think about this day so often. But I don’t often go back to look at the photos. So seeing it and kind of reliving it makes me feel very sad, because it was a very peaceful event leading up to the shooting. And unfortunately, that wasn’t the way it was portrayed in the news afterwards. Unfortunately, the shooting really did, overshadow how the community came together, and how we had folks from all races and ethnicities and communities come together to grieve, to provide support for each other, to uplift each other, and to unite in a way that, to let folks know that we’re together in this, then your pain is my pain. And as long as there is injustice done to you, I’m going to be with you. And unfortunately, the shooting shifted the perspective of pain from all of the events that led up to this protest to what actually happened that one day.

Cinthia Jaimes 11:22  I felt like there was no way to talk about my journey without bringing up this event. This protest definitely changed the course that I was on. When it came to my photography career, I realize how important this event was for my life personally. It reminded me of my values, and that you can practice your values in different ways, which was something that I had a really hard time understanding as a young adult, when I was trying to get into photojournalism. I wanted people to be seen, I wanted to hold space for folks, I wanted to provide a space for healing, whatever that looked like whatever you were healing from. And I’ve learned that I could do that in my studio with portraiture. Although this was such a tragic event, it reminded me that I can still hold a space for our community. And instead of photographing these events, I can shift to photograph and immortalize their happy memories, too. So I know that these stories deserve to be shared. Our community’s pain deserves to be photographed and shared to help folks understand our perspective and our pain and pain from others that have had to experience things that they could never, as a non-Black woman, I’ll never experienced racism, the way that Black women and Black men experienced racism.

Cinthia Jaimes 13:00  And I learned after this event that I really wanted to be able to highlight people’s good memories, too. I think, at least in my family, we didn’t take photographs often. And so we didn’t have those photos to pass down to other generations of this is also what our lives were like, not just what the world was like for us, but what we made of our lives in the midst of it all. So I definitely appreciate the shift and I was able to do, where I can also highlight the positive and people’s lives and immortalize where they are now and how they look now, so that they can look back at these photos when they’re much older they can pass these photos down to the next generation. And so that not just our trauma is immortalized in photos.

Mónika 14:08  Cin has shared with us an image that represents the pivotal event that led her to her current path as a portrait and boudoir photographer. Each genre of photography demands of us to look authentically at our strengths and weaknesses. In order to produce powerful work, creatives have to dig deep into what our bodies minds and emotions are capable of and create from there. In this next image Cin takes us into another pivotal moment. And this case, it’s an affirmation that she was on the right path.

Cinthia Jaimes 14:53  This photograph is taken in my studio in one of the little corners I have. We have my little famous mirror in the background and some plants that are all thankfully, matching with gold accents in the background She has a light beige robe, her hair is curly, and she’s wearing a baby’s breath crown that has a halo effect over it too. So it just all added in came together very beautifully. And through the actual camera lens, I was able to use a filter, a glass filter that helped distort the edges. And so it’s all distorted around every edge. And then it’s perfectly crisp, right in the center where her faces. So she’s kneeling down, a little bit leaning forward with her upper body. And she just looks like you just walked in on her in the middle of what the telenovela. It was just perfect. It definitely felt like one of those photos for me that I think every photographer every now and then gets really lucky that their client either moves or does or changes their pose in a way and that line happens to be perfect. And they just snap a photo. And it just all the luck in the world came together to capture a beautiful photo without it necessarily having been intended to come out that way.

Cinthia Jaimes 16:18  She wanted to have a very ethereal photoshoot. And I remember when we first had our consultation leading up to the shoot, I felt a little anxious of not knowing exactly how to convey that in my studio. Because my studio is very industrial, she was very gracious with me, she was open to doing whatever. And so if you take a look at this photo, she is actually wearing a robe backwards. So the opening is in the back and we have it pinned with a clamp, so that we basically have a makeshift gown. And we had her sit down on the floor. And the lighting was perfect in that angle that I remember I had just gotten these new fractals, these new filters that you can hold in your hand. And I think that this was one of the first shoots I ever used them with. And it really just changed the way I photographed after that. I mean, I felt like I created magic. And I was just like life changing for me, she really wanted an ethereal look. So I was very grateful to be able to capture that in camera with the filters, I was grateful for the crown that I had just gotten in and she’s wearing, which has baby’s breath on it. So we definitely managed to get creative in the way that we brought the energy and the vibe that she wanted to be photographed in together, she just felt like such a natural that she was able to have this beautiful expression on her face where you feel like she is like in the middle of a scene in a telenovela, she feels both delicate, but powerful to me. She was very good at taking instructions and really being vulnerable to explore herself in front of the camera. To this date is definitely one of my favorite photos for sure.

Cinthia Jaimes 18:24  Although we didn’t have a one set plan, because it was a new style for me, she let me play around with the robe, which is again, we have the rope making a gown, which was not planned leading up to the shoot. So it felt very collaborative. And I will always appreciate photoshoots like that she was very open to giving feedback and to letting us try things we hadn’t tried before. So I feel like the photo shoot and the photo, this photo in particular was a product of a client willing to be collaborative with a photographer. Of leaning on me and let me, just trusting that we would have fun during the process and see where it would take us. And so I was really blown away. By the way, I looked at the back of the camera and saw this photo because again, it had it was nothing like anything I had shot before. And I remember showing it to her and we were both shook. Like she had such a beautiful energy. I genuinely enjoyed, you know, obviously photographing her but just being in her presence. She was such a beautiful soul. So we weren’t just feeding off each other’s energies. We were hyping each other up both of us was able to have fun. Obviously my job was to create these beautiful portraits, but when your client gives you the opportunity to like to explore as you’re shooting, you have fun and you kind of rediscover that it’s not just a job. It’s definitely a passion that you have. It’s always shoots like that that have the most breathtaking photos for me. And this was definitely one of those breathtaking photos. When the shoot was all said and done, and she left, I remember, I definitely had one of those aha moments of, I am so lucky to do what I do. And this is definitely what I was meant to do. It was definitely one of those like validating moments of like, this is what I was meant to do. I remember the very first time I posted this photo on social media, it blew up, rightfully so she’s gorgeous. And so it was just validating to get the opportunity to explore and remind myself that I haven’t even gotten as good as I’m going to be like, I’m always going to continue to grow. And I should have to foster the environment to give myself the chance to continue to grow, which means going into it with a positive mindset that even if you don’t know exactly how you’re going to get something done. If you have the right energy and mindset leading up to it, you’re going to be able to figure it out. And sometimes like this photo, it’s going to come out even better than you expected.

Cinthia Jaimes 21:01  I think throughout our photography journey, we’re always trying to learn something new, or improve our craft in some way trying to change things so that we can continue to grow, but so that we can also really stand apart from our peers. And for me, being able to practice with these filters, and getting the opportunity to create really ethereal and glowing photos helped me discover a new photography style. After the shoot. I’ve been told countless of times that my photos were so dreamy. And so I think in a way, it also helped me learn to photograph my clients in a softer light. Because the filter was having this the streaming effect added to the photo, this almost like fantasy effect added to the photo, the energy that the clients were having their poses had to match the outside of the photograph, it definitely helped, in my opinion, it helped me elevate my client’s photos to have a little bit more of a dreamy and almost a fantasy feel to them. And again, it was one of those things that a lot of clients couldn’t imagine themselves having. You come in for a photoshoot and you think you’re gonna get you know, super sharp and super clean photos. And this was always a great opportunity to get creative because no two photos ever look the same when you’re playing with the filters when you’re shooting different clients when you have different poses or different angles or different outfits. So it was just another way of discovering or rediscovering that there’s always a new way to shoot something differently.

Cinthia Jaimes 22:57  I am so proud of this photo. And it always makes me so happy to see it. I actually submitted this photo to an art competition and it won an award I believe it won bronze. So it was just one of those photos that you have in your career that just brings you joy, and reminds you that although this is definitely a job now, it’s something that we’re very fortunate to do. Because we get to create something that is always going to be a little bit better than we even anticipated being. I look at it now very fondly because I knew that I was scared leading up to the photoshoot. But it just reminds you of how rewarding some risks taking can be.

Mónika 23:51  As creatives, we often seek those affirmations and sparks of serendipity where everything just comes together and that feeling that Cin talks about looking at the back of our camera sustains us for a time until the next moment of creative affirmation comes along. In our next image tour, Cin takes us behind the scenes of one of my personal favorite images of hers.

Cinthia Jaimes 24:20  This photo is from my Día de los Muertos collaboration with Cadena Collective in 2021. I was very grateful to have had the opportunity to shoot with them again after our first little photo shoot in 2020. We came together with a couple of different women and artisans to really pour into this shoot and be able to share a culture with others. A lot of us unfortunately didn’t grow up being allowed to participate or practice the Día de los Muertos and as adults now we are reconnecting with our roots and the traditions and our culture that means so much to us and we always appreciated and being able to practice them now. So I was very grateful to be able to, to photograph all of these women coming together for the session and being able to share that part of our culture with folks that have not had the opportunity to practice themselves or who are just appreciating the tradition of it as a culture. So if you can believe it or not, this was actually a happy accident. When I was photographing Rosa, which is the model in the shoot, I randomly got one of my filters and put it up to my lens, and when I clicked the shutter, the flashes went off and this was the result, you can see all throughout the edges that the light was refract in all sorts of ways. And leading up to this, I have actually never used my filters when using off camera lighting. It never looked good when I tried it before. I think that the different sliding setup that I had this time was able to create this. And I remember my jaw dropping when I saw it, I immediately had to stop shooting. And I just shared a photo from the back of the camera with everyone. Because it was something unlike anything I had ever shot before. And everyone was just so floored at how beautiful this was looking even just straight out of camera without any retouching. So on camera, right, I had one flash that had a yellow gel on it to create a different color behind her. And thankfully, that ray of light was refracted throughout the entire image and created this almost fantasy effect. And thankfully, because of the filter I was using as well, you can see a little bit of a reflection of Rosie to camera left right next to her. And it looks so creepy in a good way because you can’t see her eyes. She is dressed in the Calavera makeup and has this beautiful flower crown. And so naturally, because of the Calavera eye holes around the eyes being black. In the reflection on her left, you only see the darkness you don’t see her actual eye. So we like to say that it was kind of like a spirit there, you know, or the duality of like life and death. Because it was just reflected once and not like on her right. But on her right we actually have the oddest placement of a light after light being reflected right in the middle for hand. So it looks almost like a lightning rod to me. And so I thought this was coincidentally such a spiritual moment. All of us were very superstitious in the studio. So we were just like, What is this mean? Why? Why did everything follow the way it did? And why does it look the way it did. But we just love the contrast of how sharp Rosa is compared to all the reflecting light around her in the image. The yellow really accented the gold and red and pinks and our flower crown that was handmade leading up to the shoot for just for her. And the makeup artist that we had was amazing. This was one of our first times ever doing a sugar skull on someone and she was so amazing. And just if you zoom in, you can see a couple of details like the ear earrings and the necklace that were also handmade by the same artist and that made the crown so she makes earrings and jewelry. But she just felt so inspired by the shoot that she tried her luck and making a flower crown for the session. And to this day I have that flower crown in the studio is the biggest one I’ve ever had. And it just felt like everything really came in perfectly together to create something unlike anything we’ve ever shot before.

Cinthia Jaimes 29:08  For me, little Día de los Muertos is a holiday where we can honor our loved ones that have passed. It is a way of never feeling too disconnected from our relatives and our loved ones or feeling like we’ve left them behind. As a Mexicana that’s just now being able to practice Día de los Muertos, it’s a really beautiful and healing feeling for me personally, because I lost my father when I was a teenager. Although we talked about him often. We hardly did anything to honor him. We obviously did our best in school and work and in life to bring honor to him. But it was one of those feels like a way to participate with with him and to, to feel a little bit more physically connected. It’s obviously evolved so much throughout the years and centuries that we’ll be in practice. Unlike Halloween, where it feels a little bit more commercialized, Día de los Muertos feels like an opportunity to, to honor those that that have passed. But also to really take a moment and appreciate those that are still with us, I would say that it’s just as much a familial holiday as Thanksgiving and Christmas. Because it’s about family, it’s about community. It’s about remembering the relationship between those that are past and those that are still here, and that they toggle of our two realms to me.

Cinthia Jaimes 31:22  When recreating the Catrina look, there wasn’t necessarily one person that we were hoping to emulate. It was more about honoring the culture and being able to have a collaborative experience with all the women that came together to bring the shoe to life. So the makeup artist took some reference photos that we shared with her and she had creative control over everything else over the colors. And it’s so lovely that she didn’t even know the color of that flower crown that was going to be placed on the model. From my knowledge that Catrina, which is what often folks often see with the sugar skull makeup is a caricature that a Mexican artist made years ago, to show that no matter what status you have in the world, we all are eventually going to come to our demise. And we can take that with us what we the only thing we take is, spiritually speaking from our salaries, our memories, we don’t take anything of value outside of that, so that dinos are often portrayed in a very, I don’t want to say a goddess like by definitely. very lavish, like Catrinas are often portrayed very lavishly to kind of pay homage to the fact of that caricature. But also, what do I think we hope our spirits feel like, at least for me, like I hope that in the spirit realm, we all feel this badass. And then we can get to share that with each other, or try to pass it on to our families here. Catrinas do normally take the shape of a skeleton, or with very lavish jewels on their face or head piece to portray the riches of this world, but also the fact that we don’t get to take them with us. Cadena Collective is a collective of female and Latin artisans that come together, to have a space to share culture, and to give folks that grew up outside of the culture, an opportunity to get connected to the rules and participate in a very respectful way. So when we first decided to do a Día de los Muertos shoot, we knew that we wanted as many women to pour into it as possible. So this shoot was definitely made with a lot of love from a lot of different women, from the girls at Cadena that were thankfully the facilitators of this shoot and this tradition that we have going now to Multi Designs, which, thankfully, made the headpiece specifically for the shoot and provided the jewelry, Jordan Crenshaw, which was the amazing makeup artist that did this beautiful Catrina lock on Rosie. And then of course, Rosie herself, which was our beautiful model during the session. And outside of the women that helped bring the pieces together. We had even more women there the day of the shoot, to help make sure that everything was taken care of and just be extra support and extra hands during the shoot. So every step of the way, everything was intentionally planned with a lot of love to be able to help keep this tradition alive, as well as educate folks on what it is so that they could participate and maybe feel a little bit more reconnected to their roots. I would love folks to be able to recreate photos from the culture regardless of if it’s Día de los Muertos or any other parts of their culture. And hoping that they’ll find a little bit of peace and love, reconnecting to whatever roots they might have been separated from. Whether it is because they were separated by a border, or because their family didn’t feel safe passing certain traditions down at least since they were in the U.S. But I would hope that people would feel inspired to get back in touch with their roots, and dedicate a little passion project to expressing what that feels like for them now.

Cinthia Jaimes 36:07  I feel very proud to look at this image. Now, to note that, in a sense, I am honoring my own culture, I am rediscovering my own culture and in a way that I hadn’t had the opportunity to discover before that we took so much pride in bringing this to life, when we held space for so many women to come and be creative together in even women outside of the Mexican culture that don’t, wouldn’t normally participate in Día de los Muertos and to prepare what to also provide these photos online for others to enjoy and see outside of our circle here in DFW, I feel like it was a great opportunity to make sure that we were in control of our own culture and our narrative rather than having folks that wanted to capitalize on it outside of the culture that didn’t care about the impact it had on our community using it because it’s just beautiful imagery for them. For us, it obviously is beautiful imagery, but that is just the product of all the love and work report into the session and into the projects that we do together.

Mónika 37:29  Cin set of three significant images speaks to me of a journey of becoming. I see so much more to come from this photographer who is clearly constantly seeking new creative discoveries in her own work and seeks out that creative synergy that happens when working in collaboration. Be sure to follow her work @cinphotos that’s C-I-N-P-h-o-t-o-s on all social media channels and at cinphotos.com where you can find the link to her new photography education YouTube channel. These links are also in your show notes. Gracias for listening. Is there anyone you know with whom Cinthia’s stories will resume? Click the share icon in your podcast player and send them this episode. It is so exciting to share the incredible talent that there is in the Latina photographer community. Who would you like to hear from? Send me a DM @ourlatinalens on Instagram or email at ourlatinalens@gmail.com All images shared in this episode were created by Cinthia Jaimes and used with her permission. Our theme song was composed by Matijias Muller. Our logo designed by Tumpa Mistry. Tis episode was produced and hosted by me Mónika Aldarondo-Lugo. Gracias for listening.

Mónika 39:00  Laancla Creative sound logo