Ximena Bares
1. Can you introduce yourself and talk about how you got into photography?
Hi, I'm from Barcelona but I've been living in the countryside for a few years now. I'm interested in photography as a means to tell stories; not so much as a way to mirror reality but as a way to get away from it.
I bought my first camera in my early twenties, although the kind of photography I do now is relatively new to me.
2. Where did you study photography?
I don't have any kind of photographic training, everything has been self-taught.
3. Do you remember your first shot? What was it?
A family portrait with my mother's Rollei camera.
4. What equipment do you use?
A Fujifilm X-T3 with a 16-55 lens or a 35 for portraits.
5. What do you hope to achieve?
I want to devote myself to photography, my true passion.
6. What compliment inspired/touched you the most?
What makes me happiest is when someone tells me that my photos have moved them and touched something deep inside. Undoubtedly, that is for me the most important purpose in art.
7. What inspires your unique storytelling?
Inspiration comes from many places but cinema and the countryside, where I live, is what inspires me the most.
8. What THREE (3) words describe your photography style?
Dreamlike, feminine, disturbing.
9. Congratulations! As the winner of the New York Photography Awards, what does it mean for you and your team to receive this distinction?
It is a great honor for me that such an expert jury, from such an important worldwide contest as The New York Photography Awards, recognizes my work and decides to award me Gold and Silver in two categories.
10. Can you explain a bit about the winning work you entered into the 2021 New York Photography Awards, and why you chose to enter this project?
Some people around me showed concerned because they thought that I had a twin sister who wanted to take her life and had wanted me to photograph the last day of her life, but it’s all fiction. If something like that had really happened, I’m not sure I’d been able to do this with such ease. As I said, I love to invent stories through my photographs, it’s all fiction.
11. How has winning an award developed your career?
Winning awards always helps, first because it reaffirms you in what you are doing and because they give you worldwide visibility, which you might not otherwise have.
12. Name 1-3 photographers who have inspired you.
My main source of inspiration comes more from cinema than photography and my absolute muse is David Lynch, although I could cite countless photographers that I love. Three examples: Diane Arbus, Joel-Peter Witkin, Ren Hang.
13. What was the best piece of advice you were given starting out, by a mentor or your role model?
Whenever I take a photo, I remember a piece of advice from a very prestigious photographer and friend of mine with a very long career behind him: “Even if you shoot in digital, you have to get used to the idea that you are shooting in analog and that the photo you take is the only photo and it is the good one.”
14. What advice would you give someone who would like to become a photographer today?
Let you look deep inside yourself and forget about trying to be who you are not.
15. What is your key to success? Any parting words of wisdom?
True success lies in doing what you want and being able to express yourself without limits of any kind.
16. How do you stay in that space of being receptive to new information and knowledge?
Being alert all the time is important, not only in art but in all aspects of life.
17. Anything else you would like to add to the interview?
Gracias.
