Mateo Ruiz González (B. 1989) in Bogota, Colombia is a photographer and storyteller based in Brooklyn, NY. In addition he is the Co-founder of Antics Publications.

Interview by Dana Stirling

How did you first start with photography? What made you realize that photography and art are the path for you?

Photography was just an accident/something that happened outside of school for me, starting back when I was going to college in Argentina. It was pretty much just trying to document my teenage years -- home parties, punk shows, skate hangs and early loves. I’m still not sure if this is the right path for me but I’m making the journey worth it at least.

Your recent project titled “Chilluns’ Croon” is based in the region of Wilson, North Carolina. I know this started with your residency at “Eyes on Main Street'' located in Wilson. Can you tell us how this residency and this place inspired you to start this project? How did this project all stars?

Yes, I was notified by Eyes on Mains Street about my residency and I immediately started doing research about potential ways to carry out my one-month residency. Just to clarify and give a little bit more background and place for the reader in the nowadays of my work, I’m not shooting home parties or punk shows anymore (even though I still attend two these two).

That being said, I did a lot of research and found a blog called Black Wide-Awake, a blog of documents of genealogical and historical interest on Wilson County’s African American history that is run by Lisa Y. Henderson, who was born and raised in the town. It was my first residency and I wanted to do something important with it. I wanted to create a photography essay and use it to create some kind of positive effect on people. Making something visually “beautiful” wasn't the first thought at all, it was more like “if I’m going to a new place I want to learn from it and tell a story about it.

After deciding this was the path I wanted to take, I revisited a project I worked on during the Pandemic with an amazing team of journalists for a grant we were given by National Geographic and Pulitzer Center. The project was created by the BK reader, a hyperlocal community news website. The project called C19WP, was inspired by President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Federal Writers Project (FWP) of the 1930s that produced audio and written recordings of formerly enslaved Americans, similarly, C19WP presented first-person multimedia narratives of peoples situations during the pandemic. This resonated a lot with Lisas research and I took inspiration from both to conduct my photography research.

This work deals with notions of race, culture, history and much more. These notions are hard to portray in general, and can also be challenging as someone who is not specifically from that place or group, race, culture etc. Can you tell us how you navigated this in your work? Was this something you had in mind when working on it?

It has been on my mind since the day I found Lisa’s blog. It is true that I am a Latino immigrant, and that I’m part of a minority, which has also been through so many unfair events throughout history but this didn't mean I could take this as a personal project. I knew I was immersing myself in something that I had no direct connection with, and given the troublesome times we were going through (2020-2021) it became even more complicated.

As I said in the previous question, Lisa was so kind and so directly involved with this project from day one that when I shared my feelings about not wanting to overstep or be disrespectful, Lisa never had a doubt about the intention behind my ideas. Lisa is an African-American woman born and raised in Wilson and having her support made me feel that I needed to do something important to carry out her research into my work and to tell the story of this place, the story that unfortunately had been forgotten and ignored not just in Wilson but all over America.

Then when I arrived at Wilson, I met a man called Castonoble Hooks (Lisa made that connection possible.) Cas is a African-American historian and storyteller born and raised in Wilson, NC. This man became my best friend, he opened the doors of his house and introduced me to all his family at his 70th birthday party. From then, we became really good friends and because of him Wilson was kind to me. Cas, his family and stories, are the most important part of this project.

I don't want to extend myself too much but creating awareness can be possible even if you don't belong somewhere. We are all the same and we all should be accountable for what happened in the past and in the same way we should be responsible for creating a change.

You mentioned in a previous interview that as part of your research for the work you came across the blog Black Wide-Awake a blog that “Documents of genealogical and historical interest to researchers of Wilson County, North Carolina’s African-American past, curated by Lisa Y. Henderson” (text by Lisa Y. Henderson). This blog is rich with history and research about this place and its past. Can you tell us more about the blog, your connection to it and how your communication with Lisa help shape the project?

Lisa and her research was my main inspiration. I reached out to Lisa and she kindly agreed to help me and talk to me about her work and the town of Wilson. We had about four calls before I traveled south for the residency. Her research is so rich and meaningful, and I have to be honest, I felt terrified of failing her but she gave me that push and I’ll always be grateful for it. Then when I arrived at Wilson, I only had four weeks and I had to learn how to digest everything while working on it. It was a great sense of adrenaline, but it was not an easy topic to work with.

During our Zoom calls with Lisa, she talked about growing up in Wilson, told me about family stories and shared so many beautiful things with such an important sense of ownership. She was the key to this project, not just because of her blog but also for all the time she put in to help me at sharing specific links, and stories, and introduce me to amazing people in Wilson. Also I felt so grateful that this woman was letting a random guy from Colombia use her almost 10 years of research to create a series of photographs. That doesn't happen very often!

Have you had any response from local residents of Wilson to the work?
The response while I was there was great. I met a lot of amazing people fighting to get the version of the truth right. So many people in Wilson are working to create awareness in young generations and using their time and hands to build community. Everyone was amazingly receptive of my ideas and the intention of my project. Everyone at Eyes on Main Street showed me their support. Every stranger I met helped me with whatever I needed, be it to find a photo of their grandparents, or to drive to the next town to find a civil war building or find the best looking Tobacco plant in a whole field, they were there to help me.

Once I shared the edit of my project, everyone was really happy and every time I shared news about the project getting a new award or prize they feel really proud. But most important of all, I feel proud that we all did it together. I just did the easy part -- snapping the photo -- but they’ve been doing all the hard work… for years.

If you could choose one story / one person / one photo to share with us, which would it be?

My friend Cas of course. We used to go and hang in his backyard and one day while smoking weed he told me a story about how when he was a kid, he and his friends had to pass through this white neighborhood on their way to the baseball field. Sometimes they had to run so they didn't get beat up, sometimes he was scared of doing it and sometimes he was just happy to get beaten up for whatever he was, cause he was proud of it and nobody was going to take that away from him.

Early that evening i shot this portrait of Cas. It was rally hot that afternoon, and it was just Cass, his friend John Howard and I, drinking Iced tea made by his wife and smoking weed. I'll never forget that moment, the smell of insect repellent, the mosquitos buzzing around, the sweat on my face, and the face of Cas just shining with excitement (we both were happy I was there.)

You chose to use Black and White and color for this project, can you tell us some of the reasons behind this choice?

Even though I only had a month to work on this, the project was constantly evolving while I was working on it. Since day one I wanted to create a mixture of “memories” and the present. I wanted to show in color the modern scenarios and use B&W to capture the symbolic photos resembling memories. Halfway through everything seemed to be a memory but also the present, and I stopped choosing based on my first Idea, I just shot both and then the images came together without a big effort -- the past is still here and that place is full of the past, and we should never forget that from anywhere.

What have been some of the biggest challenges in making this work so far?

The biggest challenge was my position in all of this historical content. But that was left behind pretty early. As I mentioned before, from Lisa I learned that no matter who you are or what you are working with, you have to be honest. And this reinforced my practice and idea of shooting for the benefit of the place I am at and for the people from that place.

I don’t care anymore about how I could feel at the moment of asking someone if I can take their portrait, either I feel awkward or get rejected, I don't care about those feelings anymore because I'm putting myself last. I’m only focused on how people might feel. Getting a no from someone is not like a lot of people selfishly say lately “a no is the worst thing that can happen,” but happen to who? The photographer for not getting the shot? What about the other person? In fact getting a “no” is a great outcome as well, it’s not about how you feel when getting rejected, it’s about understanding you’re just taking a photograph of someone, or someone's life, or someone’s feelings, and all of those things are in the big picture more important than any photograph you could take.

Also time -- one month wasn't enough. I still considered this project an ongoing project.

2020 till day has been a challenging time for all of us in various capacities. How did the pandemic affect your work? Did it make it more challenging to go and photograph? Is there anything that you learned in this time that will forever change you as an artist?

It changed me forever. I had the time to focus on what I really wanted to do as a photographer. I stop shooting just for the sake of shooting. I stopped creating work just because it looks “cool.”

Those times showed me I needed to use my photography as a tool for improvement, self and communal. Photographs can be bad or good, but also can be great if the content behind it can teach the viewer something relevant, even if it's on a personal level.

What has been some of the best advice / feedback / critique you've received that you feel really pushed you forward and that stuck with you and your work?

I stopped looking for photographs while looking at photographs (the worst form of inspiration.) Now I look for them while I read.

Do you have any advice for readers that are interested in making work that deals with social or political subjects?

Do your research. Politics is ugly. Focus more on people's feelings. And don’t forget politics is always ugly.

Lastly, do you have anything you want to share? Any new work, news, exhibitions etc you want our readers to know about?

If anyone is interested in my project Chilluns’ Croon please visit my website to see the full project. I’m also working on my very first real book, it's going to be a really limited run but really special and really odd, so keep an eye out.

Also please check my publishing house Antics Publicaitons which I run with my best friend Pablo Mejia. We have an amazing new publication called Augury by Elena Helfrect and Teri Varhol.

Thank you Dana for your endless support and encouragement. Thank you for this space and for your time. It’s been a real pleasure!

Artist Website