I work with X-ray film to generate commentary that might transcend the mere technical aspects of the procedure. With the creation of situations and sets, an inner narrative is constructed that allows me to consider human feelings freed of their context ―the potentials and defects of the existential condition―, permitting me to deal with these subjects ironically, without resorting to artifice.
My photographic practice has been influenced by a definite interest in artistry that transcends photography’s use as a record or document of reality. Formal manipulation and craft techniques allude to a game of representations in which I examine my models through actual X-ray plates, dealing with clinical discourse as a form of art.
Yomer Montejo
A graduate of an arts and crafts school in Cuba, Yomer Montejo responded to a demand for public health workers and studied a medical specialization in 2007. He chose imageology, finding in it a material and formal support for his artistic experimentation. His first works were X-ray negatives projected onto light boxes. Starting from specific situations and settings, the artist constructs an internal narrative in order to reflect on the feelings, virtues, and defects of being. In 2010 Montejo received honorable mentions at the Salón de Arte Digital and at the 6th edition of the Salón Panorama 42. He was a finalist at the Salón de Arte Erótico 2008 in Havana. He is a member of the Asociación Hermanos Saíz, an independent organization that promotes artistic, literary, and cultural projects.
In a Haitian context, the French noun noctambule evokes a night-dweller whose perceived clandestine activities best flourish away from the brightness and tumult of daylight. Josué Azor’s photographic essay Noctambules offers viewers a glimpse into the quieter yet energetic practices of those people who choose to evade the critical gaze of day-walkers and forge intimate and sustaining connections when the sun sets.
Excerpted from a larger series, the photographs in this project display what is powerfully queer and effectively resistant about encounters between bodies in devalued spaces, embraced by the night.
We invite viewers not only to reflect on these documented performances as a testament to the artful survival of queer nocturnal worlds, but also to register their own position and the position of the photographer as we appreciate moments frozen in the shadowed private lives of urban Haitians.
Working in the areas of documentary, social, and artistic photography, Josué Azor began to travel around Haiti in 2008, combining his passion for photography —a discipline in which he is self-taught— with his interest in the religious practices of his country, with a particular focus on Vodou, which he documented in the town of Gonaïves. Azor participated in the 2nd edition of the Changjiang International Photography and Video Biennial in 2017 and in the Rencontres Photographiques de Guyane (French Guiana) in 2014. In Noctambules, he explores the nightlife of the LGBT community in Port-au-Prince, in the aim of giving this sector of society greater visibility. He is a member of Kolektif 2 dimansyon (K2D), a collective of young photojournalists and visual artists in Haiti.
