I've had the pleasure to meet Felipe Romero Beltran,
a Colombian documentary photographer,
for this podcast.
Felipe has been living abroad for 14 years,
so migration and this experience of exile is very personal and is very present in his work,
which probably explains that he...
mainly focuses on migration in his projects.
But what is particularly striking in Filippo's work is that he apprehends migration from the point of view of the body.
The body is really the metaphor in his work of a state of coercion and tension that is inherent in the experience of exile.
This interview is a great opportunity to delve into a very singular documentary approach since I
Felipe has developed over the years a very personal language that is at the intersection of photography,
performance,
collaboration,
as well as conceptual research and theory.
Hi,
I'm Lily and you're listening to Vision,
the podcast that brings images to life.
This episode was made in partnership with MPB.
the world's largest online platform for buying,
selling and trading used photo and video gear.
If you're interested,
there's a link in the description of this podcast.
I'm trying to think about a photograph,
but actually the first thing that came in my mind was a piece,
an art piece that it's from
Oscar Muñoz,
a Colombian artist,
that actually he draws with a pencil and water.
on the concrete,
on the street,
a face.
And somehow,
even if it's not a photograph,
that reminds me two moments or two conditions of the photographic image.
The first of all,
the impossibility of representation is this impossible attempt to represent something.
And secondly,
the actual nature or condition of the photographic medium as technology in our times.
So it's not a...
photograph itself but I think it speaks a lot on the photographic condition in our days.
I'm
Felipe Romero Beltrán,
I'm a Colombian artist based in Paris.
I started with photography when I was
Around 15,
the beginning,
well,
I was born and raised in Colombia,
in Bogota.
And my family and,
you know,
my friends,
my relatives didn't have a strong connection with the photographic medium.
So I was quite far away of the practice.
And then somehow I found a camera through my sister,
I guess.
And
I completely felt obsessed with the photographic medium.
And then from that moment on,
I started to make pictures at the very beginning with my family,
with my friends and in social events.
And after that,
I applied for a scholarship in Argentina,
in Buenos Aires,
to study a bachelor degree in photography.
I got the scholarship in 2009 or 2010,
and then I moved there for my studies.
When I was finished,
actually,
when I was finished my bachelor degree,
I applied for another scholarship.
Well,
more than a scholarship,
it was a residence in Jerusalem,
in
Palestine. And
I got the scholarship at the Hebrew University for almost two years.
So I moved there for that time.
Also,
you know,
like trying to question and keep pursuing this eager and this question about the photographic image that I had.
since the beginning.
After that,
it was 2014,
2015,
I came back to Argentina and I applied to another scholarship for a master degree that I got in Madrid.
So
I started my master degree in 2015 and then when I finished I decided to apply for a PhD to continue my,
well,
my questioning on.
more on the academic side of photography and I finished the PhD last year,
fortunately.
I was born and raised in Bogota and
I was supposed to enter to the university to study mathematics and philosophy.
And then when I discovered this apparatus of camera,
I instantly get obsessed with that because I was used to categorize and to approach reality through words.
So,
for example,
you say a table and you categorize that object as a table.
you said book and you categorize that object as a book.
With photography,
it's almost completely the opposite.
So it's really,
really complicated and complex since it's a non-verbal way of approaching reality.
And in that sense,
it's much older than verbal knowledge.
So I was completely,
completely keen on questioning this way of,
let's say,
communication with reality.
I have this approach on a really basic level.
It's like a really instinctive,
it's primary,
and it's not about words,
it's about pure image making.
I had a really big influence when I started my career as a photographer because,
as I said before,
I...
Studying Argentina,
as you may know,
Argentina has quite a special and a strong relation within the camera and the social events.
So normally,
and it's already a tradition in Argentina to use the camera as a tool of social change,
so it's quite embedded and quite surrounded by this,
let's say,
condition and also definition of the photographic act.
And that was at the very beginning.
Afterwards,
I started to develop an interest more into cinema and painting.
And more recently,
and especially because of the projects that I've been developing,
I'm quite interested in Baroque painting and probably filmmakers from the
70s in Italy and some of them in France.
Baroque painting has
At least for me the same question that I'm trying to solve in my photographic practice,
that it's the question of the body.
In the sense that
I'm trying through my practice to make evident and to register and to put in the table how certain languages,
in my case the law,
categorize and define a body.
But it's impossible and it's a
an impossible attempt to define what it means and what it actually means to define and categorize a body.
My approach to photography has been changing especially
the last probably five years or six years because I've been,
as I told before,
I've been writing a PhD more on the theoretical side on image making that of course inform and fit my practice as a photographer.
Probably not in a direct way but of course it made me transition to certain ways of thinking,
certain ways of approaching reality that
I'm trying to develop that on my photographic practice.
That said,
I'm really interested in a type of image that is silent and probably more related to a certain instinct of image making more than as an illustration of concepts or as an illustration of ideas.
That it's also another way to use photography as a tool.
I normally use medium and large format film.
Sometimes,
for example,
in the case of the project called Dialect,
I use digital because it was the easiest way to,
you know,
to relate with the subject that I was photographing.
And also it was kind of a learning field that I was developing at the time.
So I decided to use digital.
I don't have any preference.
It's true that if I use digital,
I need to work more on the photographic surface because
it gives you a raw image then you have to work on it and that's why when i shoot digital i work with the team for the post-production to help me to achieve these densities and the contrast and the colors and the general surface that i wanted to achieve on
a digital file
I start my academic path through certain questions that I had that I couldn't solve through the practicing of photography.
That means that I didn't want to put words on the practice that I was doing at the time.
So I was doing,
let's say,
purely image making and then on the side I start to develop an intellectual field,
an academic field.
to solve another question that I had around image making.
For me,
the act of photography is sometimes questioning and sometimes answering certain doubts and certain questions and demands that I have into reality.
And the academic side helped me doing the same,
but through words and through verbal knowledge that sometimes I can't solve that through my practice.
So that's why I've been,
well,
I've been trying to develop a conceptual field,
an academic field on the side of my practice.
For example,
my PhD,
it's about documentary image and it has nothing to do with my practice itself.
But of course,
it's kind of I'm the same person.
So it informed me as a photographer and my practice.
in for me as a researcher.
So that's why I've been trying to figure out how to balance these both,
you know,
questions and these both,
let's say,
sides of my practice as an artist and at the same time it helped me a lot to balance sometimes when I'm too close to image making to keep distance a little bit and the other way around.
It was mainly because of the influence that I had at the time when I started doing photography.
I came from Bogota,
so
Bogota has a quite strong social history and relation with image making as in Buenos Aires.
And then I moved to Argentina that reinforced that notion of the relation between reality.
the photographic apparatus,
the photographic technology,
as,
let's say,
a translation of the reality normally related to social movements and to social issues.
So I think that condition is still on myself as an artist.
But then,
of course,
I've been developing and I've been trying to figure out how to de-place this direct notion.
in certain different ways that allows me to wider the spectrum of reality first of all and also the possibilities of the projects.
I start to work in these projects first of all because of my
unconditioned migrant in Spain in this case,
then it's true that every single project that I start
I never started on that let's say on that scope of define or categorize political or social case.
I always start the project thinking about what I have in front of me or what I have around me and then of course these political layers.
raises up because you have certain responsibility what you're doing but my first instinct is on image making is not on on a verbal level it's more about something that intrigues me and question me on
a photographic level.
Dialect started in 2020 because
I was invited to a workshop in
South Spain,
in Seville,
to share my own experience as a migrant.
So it has nothing to do with my photographic practice.
I was invited as a person who has been living in
Spain for a few years and
I was invited to share my own path from Colombia to Spain and how I managed to stay in Spain regarding papers,
regarding documentation,
business,
etc.
So in that workshop we were around
30 people from different backgrounds,
more Latino guys as me,
people from
Eastern Europe,
people from
Maghrebi.
people from Central Africa.
And then I encountered a group of young migrants who recently crossed the Mediterranean Sea from Morocco,
from Tangier to the coast of Cadiz.
And we instantly connect somehow.
At the time they were minor,
so it was literally,
it was nothing to do with my,
let's say with the project as a project itself.
I just started to to make pictures for them,
for their Instagrams,
for their,
you know,
personal.
interested.
And with time,
well,
they become adults.
And then
I realized that I could probably establish a project on a three-year period because three years is the amount of time that if you arrive without documentation in Spain,
you can claim a special bureaucracy to get the documentation that it's called arraigo social.
So that means that if you stay in the country for
three years without making trouble,
without getting off the country,
without being deported,
you actually can access to a legal residency after three years.
So for me,
that scope of time was quite interesting because,
first of all,
they were young people,
you know,
with a lot of things to say,
a lot of things to do,
with a passion and eager to make a living in Seville in this case.
And the project started as a photographic series of a group of guys,
also related to,
you know,
these roles of masculinity,
these roles on this mini society that there were around
15 guys.
At the end I ended up working with seven or eight for the long-term project.
So that means that
I was quite interested more into the dynamics of the group,
but then of course
I realized that it has a strong political layer and I have to address that for basically responsibility on the project,
especially when I start to show the images that actually
I start to show the images after two years of working.
So it gave me time to develop and to really work on something that I was trying also to learn.
It was not nothing.
conceived as a project,
as a photography project.
It was nothing at all like that.
And then after two years of the work in progress with them,
I started to put together some images and to present the images to some curators,
to some prices and venues to see if it could work in an artistic environment.
One of the first questions for me on dialect when I started the project,
it was about the communication and in communication between the language and the body.
The language in this case is the law and the body are the guys who I was photographing.
And
I did a preliminary exercise that is called Recital,
it's a video piece,
that I asked
Joseph, Javiv and Bilal.
to read the first four pages of the immigration law,
the Spanish immigration law,
when they were actually learning Spanish.
So it's a recording of around 20 minutes each one where they're trying to read the index of the
Spanish immigration law and the piece shows quite well and quite evident the
Well,
the tension and the struggle between the body and this law that is trying to categorize the body.
For me,
that was one of the first,
probably the first question about dialects,
how a law or how a document can categorize a body.
And if you see and if you read the Spanish immigration law,
it has around 100 pages.
So it's an impossible attempt to define,
to somehow...
categorize and set what is a body and specifically what is a migrant body in Spain.
The book for me it's a quite interesting device because first of all it's an object that has been present with us for a long time.
Secondly,
it allows me to probably explore another ways to put images on reality.
And also because it's portable,
so it's easy to carry on and to present to people.
And also that means that it has somehow an intimate relation with the viewer.
So that's why I'm quite interested in working with books,
especially for these last two projects.
I did another project that was not meant to end in a book,
but with Dialect and Bravo,
I think.
It was quite important to finalize the project into a book.
Bravo is more,
let's say,
a catalog,
and
Dialog was more an attempt to put the images and text into the same object as a device.
That's why also I'm using different mediums and different disciplines to,
let's say,
to approach the project,
because I think the book is a really good...
format that allows us to not mix but put together different type of knowledge.
Bravo is a project that I started in 2021 mainly for two reasons.
The first one was because my sister moved to Mexico at that time and I wanted to get close to her.
It's been already almost 14 years that I've been away from my place.
Then the second reason is because I had some friends in Monterey,
that it's the biggest city closer to the borderline that I wanted to visit to.
So I went there in 2021,
at the beginning of 2021,
to see if I could,
you know,
resonate with something.
And quite quickly,
I realized that there was something.
especially up north in Monterey and closer to the borderline,
that was resonating with me quite closely.
And I wasn't sure why it was that.
And after a while,
I realized that the migration path from Colombia to crossing the entire continent,
to cross the river and to achieve the United States,
leaves certain traces and certain heritage on the way of talking.
on the music,
on the food,
that was resonating with me quite strongly.
Even if this place were thousands of kilometers away of my own home country or my own city.
And that's why I start to photograph at that place.
Then of course,
I realized that this landscape in transition were quite interesting also in terms of this waiting that it was already present in dialect.
And I decided to separate or to categorize three moments,
three chapters in the project.
The first chapter,
it's called Cierres,
that for me were questions about the interior spaces of the houses of the migrants.
And not only the migrants,
also the,
well,
the general landscape in the houses before the borderline.
I was photographing mainly
friends and then friends of friends or people that I met through my friends because it was much easier to you know be there and to access and to just enjoy the situation and the second chapter it's called bodies that
are the portraits of these friends of mine or people that I met through my friends during the last three four years and then the last chapter is called uh bridges
Brecha in Spanish has two meanings and it's quite interesting because the first meaning we use it for categorize the unofficial paths that take you to the borderline in this case to the
Bravo River and the second meaning it's we use it for describe a wound in the body so that
double meaning made quite powerful this last chapter because it was also the opportunity to register and to show the actual landscape before the borderline into the river.
For the book it's interesting also to mention that
I ask normally with in dialect and at least in dialect and bravo I ask different friends of mine to write something not about the project but something that could resonate with the project.
So in the case of dialect I invite six different people two of them participants of the project who were on the images on the photographic.
series and then a friend who is a philosopher,
then a lawyer,
then a choreologist,
that it's a person who is in charge to translate the movement to paper.
So you know these different voices can,
as I said at the beginning,
open the spectrum of the possibilities of the project and not only let's say
stay with the image making,
but also because if it's a book,
for example,
when I'm translating that to an exhibition,
it's not always the case that I use all the material.
Sometimes I just use the images.
So it's depending on the specific case and on the specific space that I'm working on.
For the book,
as a space,
as a device,
I'm trying to open the spectrum as much as I can and also bringing
some frames from the video pieces and some,
let's say,
different conceptual approaches to the same topic.
When
I start a project,
it always starts...
quite chaotic.
I just photograph wherever I have the ear and the question to photograph and then afterwards,
and that's why for me it's important to build the projects in a long-term basis because it means that
I can actually reflect on what I'm doing through the passing of the years.
nor sometimes
It's complicated because of course you need to make a living and you need to,
well,
put your energy into the project.
And of course it's not profitable in any sense,
economically speaking.
But nevertheless,
I'm trying to keep that in all my projects because this timeline gives me the opportunity to rethink and to see afterwards.
what I'm actually doing.
I'm not capable to photograph and
verbally reflecting at the same time.
I'm thinking visually and then I'm thinking verbally.
This
Magdalena project was probably first stage on my photographic career where I was starting to questioning about,
well,
actually the...
the notion of the body.
In this case,
the body was much more present and at the same time absent because to describe a little bit about the project itself,
it's
Magdalena River,
it's probably the most important river in Colombia.
It crosses the entire country from the mountains to the
Caribbean Sea and do a geographical phenomenon when you have
two different levels on the river,
and it happens in all the rivers of the world.
The river creates certain whirlpools that emerge all the things that the river has inside,
on the water.
Of course,
normally,
these objects that emerge from the river are just simple objects,
or woods,
or trash,
or whatever the river.
this big body carries on.
But in the case of the Magdalena River,
specifically in a certain area that is called Magdalena Medio,
the river expulses the parts of yeah,
parts of the body that has been they tried to disappear these bodies on the action of throwing the bodies into the river.
So that means that this sign,
this symbol and this
body that emerged from the Whirlpools were the main question for me on that moment.
It was 2014,
2015 until 2020 that I was carrying out this research,
not only visually but also,
let's say,
conceptually speaking and socially speaking too.
So that was the main context of the project,
this signed up
appears and emerged from a river that talks about a political and a social situation and condition on Colombian society.
This project that is called A Body That Speaks As A Bird,
it's a...
project that I recently started on a question of transition.
I'm wondering,
I'm also questioning,
how was the transition between the rural sides of Colombia into the cities between the
40s and the 80s?
There was a huge migrant flow between the rural sides and the urban sides in Colombia in in this case.
between the rural side and Bogota as the capital of the country.
And my family was part of that transition.
So
I've been investigating and researching how this transition was produced,
especially through certain manuals and books that categorize bodies and teaches how they should behave in society and how they behave in the cities.
to not resemble someone who came from the rural side of the country.
And my family,
especially my mom and my uncles,
learned that manual in order to behave in a good way in the city.
So once again,
it's a law,
in this case a manual,
that tries to categorize and define a body,
in this case my family in Colombia.
I've been working in different pieces,
not only photographically speaking,
but also with some writing exercise on how you should write and how you should address other people in the city on juxtaposition with how you actually refer to each other on the countryside,
on the rural side of the country.
So
I'm still questioning,
visually speaking,
how to show that because
as I said at the beginning,
I don't want to
illustrate this concept how the conceptual field is this transition of this body but then the images should be autonomous of that let's say conceptual field i'm trying
to spend more time in colombia also my mom is getting older so i need to be there quite frequently i'm trying to go
twice a year at least and for a few weeks in order to also to develop the project that's why actually i started the project the first instinct was okay i need to be in colombia because you know i i need to get along with my family i
want to you know reconnect with that part of my identity so the let's say the the way of building that once again was through this project
And that's why I'm working on that right now.
Especially this time,
I'm working with people that
I know from a long time.
So sometimes it's easier,
sometimes it's more complicated.
And I'm working with a large former camera.
So that means silence,
that means kind of a ritual.
I really like this medium for this project because it allows me also to spend time on location,
on set,
too.
figure out how to achieve and how to build the image that I'm looking for.
If you think about it,
photography has,
let's say,
generally speaking,
three conditions.
First condition is the image as a mirror of reality.
That's something that you have.
It's an index,
right?
It's a handprint that you have on the photographic surface.
Then
You have a second condition that it's a translation of that reality that of course is conditioned by the framing,
the photographic surface,
if it's colored,
if it's black and white,
which type of medium you use and which type of technology you use.
And then a third moment that it's quite interesting as well that photography produces reality.
It's an autonomous entity that It produces another type of reality that it's completely.
different from the reality that we see.
And this third moment interests me a lot,
especially in this last project,
because it would allow me to make or to build,
hopefully,
an autonomous reality of the actual reality that I'm seeing.
I'm actually right now start to work in a video piece that I'm trying to develop here in Paris on a school of
French as a second language,
as myself included,
also to put in that once again relation,
tension relation within the body and the language and how in this case
French language categorize
certain realities and how you have to learn this way of speaking to adapt and to relate to society and to relate to the actual reality that you live here.
So this is something that I'm just start to work in,
but
I really want to build something here since I'm based here.