These images are actually shot with a Leica M9.  Yet I decided to process them using Nik’s Snapseed for the mac, to create a consistent look with what I shot on the iPhone and create a consistent series for my whole Los Angeles Trip.  I had fun using this very simple, filter based software to process images.  It’s a refreshing experience every now and then to get out of my workflow routine.

Photo: Many ways to eat an ice-cream series.  Shot with a Leica M9 and processed with NIK’s Snapseed  By: Martin Herrera Soler. 

De todas las fotos que saqué este año durante el desfile de Llamadas, esta es seguro la que más me gustó.  Hace ya más de cuatro años que estoy fotografiando Candombe, y el desfile de Llamadas en particular.  Cada año se me hace más difícil no repetirme, y de todas las fotos que saco, pocas son las que realmente suman al cuerpo de trabajo existente.  Dicho esto, siempre alguna ‘cosita’ inesperada aparece y justifica la el día de trabajo.  En el 2012, esta es la foto que más me gustó.

Photo: Vedette from the comparsa Sinfonía de Ancina.  Foto: Vedette de la comparsa Sinfonía de Ancina.  By: Martin Herrera Soler. 

Photo: Clara, KC and Misha playing in La Laguna del Sauce, Maldonado, Uruguay.  Shot with an iPhone 4s.  Processed with Snapseed.  By: Martin Herrera Soler. 

Photo: return from Punta del Este, Uruguay.  Shot with an iPhone 4s.  Processed with Snapseed.  By: Martin Herrera Soler. 

Semana Santa (Holy Week) it’s coming to an end.  In Uruguay, better known as Semana de Turismo (tourism week), it makes the end of ‘true summer’ and it’s well know to signify the start of the year.  I know it might seems a bit late for this given we are in April, but despite the slow change over the years, this remains pretty much true down here.  We worked a lot this week, nonetheless we managed to squeeze a wonderful free fay with friends in the East.

Since I got my iPhone 4s which has a significant better camera than the iPhone 4, and having come across with Snapseed to process my images, I cannot stop making and processing images in my phone.  There is something very liberating of a much simpler workflow and the instant share possibilities.

 Photo: A view of the Ferris Wheel in the Santa Monica Peer taken with the iPhone and processed in Snapseed.  By: Martin Herrera Soler. 

If you are from this part of the world, you know well that for most Uruguayans the year starts after the Holly Week has passed.  And even thought this has been slowly and gradually changing over time, it remains fundamentally true in many ways (perhaps more on this unusual aspect of our culture at some other time).  But for a different reason, I feel that my year is just starting.  In my particular case, because it pretty much never ended.  I went straight from a very intense end of the year to an even more intense beginning of 2012.

In January I spent two weeks in Antigua, Guatemala working for The Julia Dean Photo Workshops assisting Phil Borges in a portrait for NGOs workshop.  It was an awesome experience with an exciting and fun group of people.  I loved spending fifteen days simply breathing, talking and doing photography.  And besides Antigua and it’s surroundings are an inspiring location to make images.

I got back to Montevideo on a Sunday, and the following day two US based photographers, Dan Milnor and Larry Hayden arrived to work for ten straight days in a collaborative project with Dokumental, the multimedia production company founded by Diego Vidart and myself (big part of my focus of 2011).  This was in fact a Latitude34South travel workshop that mutated into a collaborative experiment.  Diego and I have experimented a lot with shared projects and that is in fact the working premise of Dokumental.  This time we are taking it further and expanding on the concept of collaboration.  A couple of weeks from now we will start to work on the shared edit merging different views, perspectives, equipment and the challenge to edit virtually from different parts of the world.  I’m excited and looking forward to this process.  I’ll share more as I go throughout it.

And only a week after they left, just as I was getting a sense of settling down, I took of for ten days to California to attend my cousin’s wedding and to reconnect with the photographic community that I so much miss.  It was an awesome trip, intense for sure, but full of opportunities to meet and engage with friends and exciting photographers and filmmakers.  I learned and enjoyed being back in my old home town.  Felt different.  But it felt really good as well.

Photo: The new ember of the family.  Tiancito.  I met him for the first time during this trip.  By: Martin Herrera Soler. 

I’m finally back and starting to look at all the work I produced over this period of time.  As I do, I’ll start to share some of it.  Not all.  Some will be shared in its final form once it gets built into the final outcome of their respective projects.  I can tell you that was exciting to be for such a long, non stop, period of time, spending all day with photographers.  A new experience for me.  I don’t think I have been as ‘social’ and spent so much time with people in any other moment of my life.  But it was rewarding and exciting, and most of all full of deep moving learnings.  A topic for another time…

Thanks for dropping by and keep stay in touch.  I hope you have started an exciting 2012 as well.  Blessings.  m.

LFI 01/2012 – Portfolio Martin Herrera Soler: Discarded (page 1).  

It is an exceptional way to start 2012, with the publication of the recent Peñarol project on the printed version of the LFI – Leica Fotografie International January 2012 issue (01/2012).  I have not gotten my hands on the printed version yet, but I do have the digital PDF outline and what I can see on the current issue preview on the LFI website.  In one word, exciting!

Peñarol is a project we co-authored with Diego Vidart.  It was originally conceived as a proof of concept to test how we could worked together, and from this adventure the Dokumental collective was born.  Part of this project was shot by me using a Leica M rangefinder (M8 and M9), and that’s what got published on the magazine.  The project it’s broader, and you can read the statement and view the video in here.   You can also see the full project edit (71 images) in this gallery.

As I continue to navigate the transition from the corporate world to spending more and more time doing documentary photography, this publication is for me a very significant milestone, and for it I am profoundly grateful.  I am thankful to Diego for all his support and the many teachings he has shared with me, to LFI for publishing the work, to all that have in many ways supported me along the way, and to myself for staying focused since I first picked up a camera in 2004.

LFI has been around my house for many years.  My mom still holds a few issues as far back as 06/1979.  It looked very different then than it does now (I will share both when I get my printed copy).  To have my work on the same magazines that have been around for that long is an awesome and rewarding experience.  If you are interested on this month’s issue, which happens to have an article on Bruce Gilden’s work in Haiti (Portfolio Bruce Gilden: Where The Spirit Lives), you car order it here. I certainly recommend it

I look forward to this new year…  Thanks for visiting!  m.

LFI 01/2012 – Portfolio Martin Herrera Soler: Discarded (page 2).   

LFI 01/2012 – Portfolio Martin Herrera Soler: Discarded (page 3).  

 LFI 01/2012 – Portfolio Martin Herrera Soler: Discarded (page 4).  

 LFI 01/2012 – Portfolio Martin Herrera Soler: Discarded (page 5).  

 LFI 01/2012 – Portfolio Martin Herrera Soler: Discarded (page 6).  

Gallery with the complete edit of images from the project, shot both by Diego Vidart and Martin Herrera.  For the project statement check here.

Escobero (stick holder) | Julio César Gonzalez | Empleado Dirección General de Registros (municipal employee)

For the spanish version of the project website including audio interviews, please check here.  English version of the website and audio interviews to be available soon.

Three centuries ago the first African-descendants arrived in Uruguay. The harsh conditions of their daily life are known; only one day per year, on the celebration of the llamadas (calling) were they allowed to honor and celebrate their cultural roots. Is it possible that today, as it happened so many years ago, we are reminded of the importance and influence of the African community in our society only this day? 364plus1 is a project that suggests a look into the space of the African-Uruguayan community at the beginning of the XXI century. Using the known symbols of the candombe as a starting point, which for many is their only contact with this community, 364plus1 proposes to widen the look beyond the obvious and question who is the person behind the character.  Martin | Daniel.  

I was working for the IT industry when left Uruguay. During the course of the ten years I was abroad, I became a photographer. In March 2008 I decided to return, in part moved by the notion that I could rediscover my country, now from the perspective of a photographer and through the lens of my camera.

Upon my arrival, the first thing that caught my attention was candombe (a native Uruguayan drumming rhythm). Daniel introduced me to it. The llamadas parade it’s a colorful, loud and crowded event that takes place the first Thursday and Friday of February.  At first I was drawn by the loud sounds, the highly produced dancers and the energy of the thousands of people that lineup on the side of the Isla de Flores street all throughout Barrio Sur and Palermo neighborhoods.

But as I got to photograph more of it, I became interested on how this widely adopted musical style and popular expression relates to our African-descendant community. In fact I started to ask myself, who are these people? Why is it that I know so little about them? How are their lives today and has over two hundred year improved in any way, shape or form their lives and opportunities?

All around Montevideo, people of all races play the drums to the rhythm of candombe. And yet, for many of us, our relationship to the African-descent community is circumscribed to one day per year, to that day in which they parade the narrow street of Isla de Flores in the celebration of llamadas. For those of us, all we know about this community is limited to the traditional symbols that define this celebration.

Photo: Mamá Vieja | Leopoldina Barboza | Empleada Doméstica (pensionista).  By: Martin Herrera Soler. 

So the question stands. Who are they and what are their lives like? 364plus1 is then an attempt to shed some light into the Afro-Uruguayan community, to give them a voice and to share their lives the rest of the 364 days of the year.

The inner workings of the show…

The show consists of four large photographic portraits (1.65mts x 1.10mts) of four emblematic African-descendants who represent four of the traditional characters of candombe. A tocador – ‘drummer’ (Alfonso Pintos), a gramillero – ‘medicine man’ (Jaime Esquivel), an escobero – ‘stick holder’ (Julio César González, also known as Gonzalito) and a mama vieja – ‘old mother’ (Leopoldina Barboza, better known as Aunt Dina).

Each one was photographed in their own space, surrounded by their belongings, thus representing their everyday life (or, in other words, their life as it is the 364 days of the year that is not the one day of celebration).  This space was intervened, introducing an object that is a traditional symbol of candombe (representing what most of us experience as the whole of this community).  For example, in the case of Alfonso, the drumming stick he uses to play the drum.

‘Drumming stick’, example of one of the four cards available to the viewer when visiting the show.

When the viewer arrives to the show he finds four small cards, and when confronted with the photograph he notices that a piece of each it is missing, exactly the same piece that the viewer is holding in his hand.  This small portion of the photograph, which contains the candombe symbol, represents only one of the 365 days of the year; it represents the llamadas day, and is only a miniscule aspect of the life of these persons.

Photo: Drummer | César Alfonso Pintos | Municipal CIty Hall worker (retired).  Example of one of the intervened photographs in order to highlight ‘the known’, or what is missing in the photo (symbol of candombe) and what is unknown to us about this community.

The portrait was taken in such a way that, once printed in the exhibited, such object occupies 1/365th of the area of the whole photograph. The cards that are offered at the show occupy, then, the equivalent to one day in the life of this person, and if 365 cards of that size were placed on the photo they would cover the totality of it.

Photo: Gramillero | Jaime Esquivel | Empleado Municipal, Escritor y Compositor.  By: Martin Herrera Soler. 

Punto de Encuentro (place of gathering) gallery in Montevideo, Uruguay. 

Facing the work in this way, it becomes evident how restricted is, for many of us, our knowledge of the African-Uruguayan collective. Inevitably, the questions rush to our consciousness.  Many of the answers to these questions are found in the details of the photos.  And they are powerfully complemented by the excerpts of audio of the interviews recorded with each one. The audio gives these people and their stories a voice, and it is through the four interviews that we can enhance our comprehension and reach a wider view of the reality of this collective.

364plus1.  Observing the image and listening to the audio interview.  

Image gallery with the four characters and the four candombe symbols.

Photo: Chair – Carboneras.  By: Martin Herrera Soler. 

Continuing the work of Peñarol, Diego, my partner at Dokumental and I set ourselves to document las ‘carboneras‘.  This is a quite large piece of land where once the British would make gas out of coal.  It’s right on the coast of downtown Montevideo, overseeing the Rio de la Plata (River Plate) in perhaps one of the most privileged spots in all the rambla.  It was abandoned many years ago, and it’s a surreal place filled with dormant stories.  Diego has started to approach the people that used to work in this location and we are in the midsts of conceptualizing what looks like the collective’s next documentary essay.

In the meantime we created some stills and video to play with the location.  It’s a place marked by the passage of time, and the more I engage with them, the more I like these locations.  I love uncovering the stories in the rundown architecture and the details left behind by the last to inhabit this place.  Check out the video Diego put together.

Photography and video: Diego Vidart and Martin Herrera.  Production: Diego Vidart. 

Photo: W.  Union Square, New York.  By: Martin Herrera Soler. 

Las August we visited New York.  It was perhaps one of the best vacations Clara and I have had.  I struggled before on ho to balance vacations and couple’s time with photography.  Of course I always had my camera with me, but before getting there I thought I could perhaps conceptualize and make a project, or right and extensive and dedicated travelogue of my trip.  It turns out I did none.  I relaxed and took a fair amount of pictured but in a totally random and non purposeful way.  Perhaps the fact that this year I did not work for the corporate world and has been spent as a full time photographer, made me reconsider  what my vacations needed to be?  In any case, this image was created with my iPhone which I found a wonderful camera to have with me while traveling.  It’s as discreet as it gets, and produces wonderful images that you can post process and share right from the phone.  Not a Leica by any stretch of the imagination, but for sure has its place in my photographic life.

Photo: Llamadas del Bicentenario.  Vedette from Sarabanda.  By: Martin Herrera Soler.

Photo: Guatemala faces many social problems and is among the ten poorest countries in Latin America. The distribution of income remains highly unequal with more than half of the population below the national poverty line. Indigenous people strive to make a living and provide for their families. Women in Antigua, Guatemala, resort to micro-lending to develop their business selling hand made craft, which are both a source of income and a way to preserve their culture and heritage from generation to generation.  By: Martin Herrera Soler.