Cinthya
Santos
Briones
Before becoming a documentary photographer, Cinthya Santos Briones studied anthropology
and Ethnohistory, which led her to work as a researcher in different institutions in Mexico,
focused on the study of indigenous and rural communities.
She was twice a fellow of the State Fund for Culture and the Arts of México. She is co-author
of the book “The Indigenous Worldview and its Representations in Textiles of the Nahua community
of Santa Ana Tzacuala, Hidalgo”. Cinthya has published and broadcasted her work in media as
well in books and magazines in Mexico, Spain and the United States, related with issues of
migration, textiles and shamanism.
Her work as a photographer is centered on community, migration, gender, identity and the struggle
for human rights. Cinthya is a recent graduate of the Visual Journalism And Documentary
Practice Program at the Internacional Center Of Photography in New York City. In the autumn
of 2016 she received a fellowship granted by the Magnum Foundation. Cinthya has worked in
pro immigrant organizations in New York as a community catalyst and organizer.
Abuelas: Portraits of the Invisible Grandmothers
This series focuses on undocumented Mexican immigrant women who came to New York decades ago in search
of opportunity for their families. Overtime they have built lives here and have become the elders of their community:
the abuelas. Many have children and grandchildren living on either side of the border. Yet, twenty and thirty years
later, still remain invisible and undocumented.
The series centers on portraits of these women photographed in the intimacy of their homes. These images seek
to contemplate the women’s relationship to place and the shaping and appropriation of their environment. In these
photographs, the home’s decorations become part of the women’s wider symbolic recreation of culture, memory
and ownership beyond borders.
I photograph these environmental portraits in a participatory manner. I ask the women: “How do you like to be seen
or represented through photography?” They choose how and where they want to be seen in their homes and what
outfits they want to wear. The series seeks to offer them the opportunity to face the camera and be depicted in a
way that reflects their own sense of identity.
Although these grandmothers are seemingly well established in the city of New York, they must work in unstable
jobs with low wages and are often the victims of exploitations and human rights violations. They work as house
cleaners, seamstresses, nannies, factory workers and in restaurants.
My interest in photographing these grandmothers arises from the need to find new forms of visual narratives that
allow us to document migration from a human perspective, told through the subjects themselves. The participatory
style of this series allows us to see and know the lives of these migrants through these portraits, which highlight
the pride and respect the abuelas still have for Mexican culture and communities within the transnational family.
Cinthya Santos Briones . Dionisia Guadalupe, Abuelas: Portraits of the Invisible Grandmothers Series . 2016
Dionisia Guadalupe, in her bedroom at 45th. street in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
She is a singer and dancer of Mexican folklore, born in Atencingo, Puebla, based in New York since 2002.
Since then she has worked washing dishes in restaurants, selling balloons and cleaning.
But her passion is singing. She is better known as “Lupe Cantarrecio” (Lupe “who sings out loud”).
She has a role in the documentary “Me Voy” (I go) directed by the film making collective Mu Media.
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