Padre
Padre is a personal and political excavation of masculinity, approached through a feminist lens. Rooted in my family history and shaped by my Latin American heritage, the project interrogates the deeply embedded structures of machismo that govern not only men’s behaviors but also the emotional landscapes of those around them. Oscillating between social critique and self-inquiry, Padre traces a lineage of absence, tenderness, violence, and care, mapping the way masculine identity is inherited, performed, and, at times, unlearned.
The project began with a set of letters written by my grandfather to my father and uncle. These intimate correspondences unfold like generational echoes, revealing how men within my family struggled to make sense of fatherhood, masculinity, and emotional responsibility. Through them, I became a witness to the contradictions at the heart of patriarchal identity: the longing for connection eclipsed by societal expectations of toughness and emotional restraint; the desire to nurture overtaken by the compulsion to dominate.
Photography becomes my way of speaking to the silences that men often leave behind. In Padre, staged portraits, archival interventions, and symbolic gestures interweave to challenge traditional representations of manhood. The act of hunting, both literal and symbolic, emerges as a central motif. It speaks to the masculine drive for conquest and control, yet within the work, this narrative is destabilized by images of vulnerability, softness, and the fragility of bodies and bonds. Many photographs trace scenes of decay and erosion, mirroring the slow disintegration of hegemonic masculinity. Its ideals, obsolete and crumbling, linger like relics, ghostly remnants of a past that continues to haunt the present.
Rather than offering easy resolutions, the project embraces ambiguity. It confronts masculinity not as a fixed identity but as a performance shaped by historical trauma, gender expectations, and cultural codes. By juxtaposing tenderness with brutality, presence with absence, Padre opens a space for reflection, asking not only what masculinity is, but what it could become.
