On pacing yourself

How do you start a project? What does the beginning of your photography practice look like before you actually pick up a camera to make an image?

I first started thinking about making projects through my undergrad at FIT, responding to prompts that I got from different classes and then seeing what narratives I could make from that. Post-university—it’s already been almost five years [since I graduated]—I’ve been photographing a bit more intuitively and responding to the spaces in which I [exist]. Typically, the main thing that I pull out of my archive is the work with my family, both in New York and El Salvador. I’m very much a long-term project sort of person. I’ve been working on this family project named Adelante for close to 10 years. It started as one thing called Mi Familia Immigrante, which was a 20-image photo essay of sorts, describing this departure that happened with my stepdad when he was applying to get his residency here in the US after marrying my mom. He was undocumented in the US for 18 years, give or take. [My work] grew out of that specific time period, to this idea of returning and responding to different ways in which immigration has built my family dynamic in these places: New York and parts of El Salvador like Sonsonate, Soyapango, La Capital, etc.

You’ve discussed your experience using the Lomo Pop 8 camera. It made me curious: when you’re making work, what tools do you use and how do you decide which ones?

That’s funny. The Lomo Pop 8 camera: I love those pictures. I didn’t make a ton of them, but I do still really love them. That was fully a thing of me being like, “Okay, I know that I’ll bring a medium format [camera], I know that I’ll bring a regular 35[mm], but what are different ways in which I can make an image of something with existing formats?” Sometimes my approach is purely experimental. Like the Pop 8, for example, or cyanotypes or transparencies, or even appropriations of my family album. It’ll be from a standpoint of, what are the different ways in which I haven’t engaged with the medium that could add some interesting friction? Or that could add some additional context, that a straight image made with a very specific camera or specific format couldn’t do? So far, I typically shoot film. But I’m not really the sort of person that gets stuck in one medium. It just depends on what I have available, what’s economical, and what’s consistent.

How do you edit your own work?

Edit as in sequence? Or edit as in color correct?

I think your response to the question shows me that there’s two different ways that you approach it. So what comes first and what comes second, and how do those interact with each other?

Definitely what comes first is the color correction/post process. Because I’m typically shooting a high volume of film, it takes me a while to even pay for it to get scanned and developed and printed [before I] start to work within sequences. So in that way, my practice is structured as a typical photo archive would be. The good thing about, for example, my photographs in El Salvador, is that I’m mostly using natural light. So there’s a consistent sort of balance and consistent color profile, especially with the sorts of film that I use, like Kodak Portra and Fuji Films. It does help me tie in images that have nothing to do with each other into a sequence of images that could exist in sequential or non-sequential [order], as prints or in exhibitions. I will say I’ve mostly done group shows, so I haven’t really been able to figure out how a lot of [my] work would look in just one space. That’s a little bit more abstract to my experience at the moment. But I do sometimes think in the book form—even though I haven’t made a book—to sequence or put stuff together for people to view, or for a grant application, or even for myself to really sit and live with.

I do have a little bit of ADHD, so if I get bored looking at works that I’ve made in a specific sort of timeline, I try to find different ways to scramble them or turn them into something that stands on its own… There’s a lot of pushing and pulling that happens even when I stick to a structure. That comes out of experience with other photographers much further ahead who have advised me on ways to break my own structure.

How long does a project take and how do you know when a project is done?

This is my biggest anxiety, especially now that I’ve spent 10 years working on [Adelante] and I’ve disseminated different versions of that out into the world through web formats, print formats, etc. I don’t really know when a project is done. I don’t feel like I have the wisdom or the right to say… I haven’t published a full book of a wide edit; I haven’t done an exhibition. The typical markers that I feel like I would have to say, “Okay, that’s done. I said what I need to say with that specific thing” haven’t really happened in that way. I just know that things are in progress versus I have a feeling that things are complete.

Maybe this is me being an Aquarius, but I feel like you can always return to a thing and then remix and say something else that you might have missed the first time. With a photo you can really do that because an image can exist in so many different contexts. A straightforward portrait or photograph of specific items, depending on the context, can always turn into something else. I like that malleability.

Yeah, this is something I’ve learned as a writer and artist myself. It got to a point—and this probably helped my anxiety a little bit—where I realized, “Oh, I’m going to be working on these ideas forever.” Oh, I’ll be reading and looking at images for the rest of my life, and that’s the work.

I relate to that, too. It’s hard, especially for us as creative thinkers, to pinpoint if this perspective you have will be the same in a year, or two years, or 10 years from now. There’s that openness, that is exciting to a certain degree and also anxiety inducing.

Also, when I first started seriously engaging with photography, most of the photographers I was looking at were dead or at the end of their careers. There was an ending to their work. It’s such a different experience as an active photographer, realizing there’s no ending until I can’t make work anymore.

100%. I’ve recently been working on the side as a freelance archivist for different photo places and for living artists. That experience has made me [realize] there’s a version that gets put out, but then the artist in the future is still finding ways to refresh the thing that they’ve already made. You can always return. It’s definitely been really interesting, working for somebody else in their archives and seeing how they respond to it both on a practical level and on an emotional level.

What do you do when you’re creatively stuck?

I love to get physical and also leave things alone for a while. Like, literally unplug. I need to go and live and do something else that will then inform this feeling of being stuck. Not to be a Kardashian about it, but literally we’re just living life. I think as I’m getting older and as my mentors keep reminding me, I don’t want to get too ahead of myself. When I’m feeling stuck, I’ve lately been taking more agency, like, “I’m going to leave this alone and that’s okay.” The only deadlines that I have are the ones that I make for myself and that’s all I really need to think about or compare it to, you know?

I travel and experience different things, especially in El Salvador. I’ve done trips in El Salvador where I haven’t made any pictures. Even trips to my home and with my family, I’m not photographing all the time and I’m allowing myself space between the intent of photography and the intent of living. Then I don’t feel that sort of pressure to always be on it.

The thing you said about deadlines is so funny because last week I was freaking out about some deadlines that had passed. When I was talking to a friend about it I realized, “Wait, all of these deadlines are my deadlines that I imposed on myself.”

There are real deadlines. Obviously, if you need to return something for an opportunity, or you’re being reached out to, that’s different. Post-grad I had applications to residencies, grants, etc., and as soon as I graduated I was like, “I have to apply to all these things. I need to make all these projects. It needs to all happen in a row.” But then a friend of mine who is much older than me [advised] that when you’re applying to something, you have to think about, “Do you think that it’s the right time for you to face that opportunity and potentially get it?” That was really impactful because [they] were right. There are those opportunities that are exciting and of course you want to say yes to. But there’s also that question of, “Is this the best foot that you’re standing on for that experience?” Especially with photo, there’s only so many things that you can get in the US. So figuring out a way to pace yourself in the way that works for you gave me more of a calmness and less of a hurry and rush.

When you’re talking about when the opportunity is right for you, how do you think about it? What’s the thought process for figuring that out?

I think I look at the external factors. What do all these relationships [that] exist in my life demand of me now? That goes back to the different responsibilities that I want to take on. There’s also the financial responsibility. What financial responsibility do I have right now, to myself, to set myself up for something? What does that take away? Or, what do I exchange to get that responsibility done, in a certain sense. Can I take X amount of time away from not being in a specific place and feel like I can come back to it and still find what I need, as far as work? Even when I’m traveling or making work with my family, I’m asking those questions all the time. It’s a very “immigrant guilt of my late 20s” mindset. How can I continue helping my family? What responsibility do I want to give myself? How can I set myself up with my archive and then with my commercial practice in a way that I can balance it? I don’t plan to have kids so I don’t have that weight of that responsibility on me. I do feel like I have the weight of my family on me.

Every artist has a phase of finding their voice or their point-of-view, or, in the case of image-making, their eye. Do you have an idea of what makes a Steven Molina Contreras image?

There’s a sense of atmosphere that I’m after and there’s a consistent sort of portrait structure that I have. In a more formal matter, yes. But in a more abstract matter, no—and I don’t think I know yet. I need to live another 20 or 30 years for that question to really apply in a way that I think is substantial. But there are formal qualities to my pictures. Formats like the vertical 4:5, natural light portraiture, staged non-fiction. Staged images that look like they could be [documentary] but are very much produced and very much in response to something larger than just what is immediately in front. I have those formal things that I think put me in that sort of image-making lineage, but I think right now I don’t know if I could fully answer that without some sort of humbleness.

Did you have an idea of a threshold for success when you first started making pictures?

Yeah. My first idea of threshold for success was getting images published by some sort of photo-related space.

Which you did, quite quickly. You had that feature in Aperture.

The thing that’s also a metric of success is how my family responds, and what sort of resolution or what sort of emotion comes from seeing a picture of them in a place they would not have imagined. I’m thinking of printed pages in a magazine, exhibitions, or even disseminated on the internet outside of personal social media accounts. Hearing their reactions and seeing how they feel about those things existing outside of themselves I’ve also marked as success. I would say I’d be more comfortable saying progress, you know? At first it was like, “Let’s make this thing, let’s put the PDFs together, let’s put the pitches together, let’s send it, let’s get published.” But then it’s obviously changed because that’s not all of it.

I think the reason why I ask that question is because—at least in relation to me—you’re still very young and have had what is perceived as great early success. To your point, one threshold of success was getting into some type of publication. So I guess the second part of the question is: once you pass that threshold you’ve set for yourself, what happens next?

Aperture has been my main supporter since the beginning of me sharing my family pictures. They published an early version of the work online and then I was able to continue growing that relationship. Honestly, networking through that, I was able to go from web to print to exhibition spaces. That’s how I think about these sorts of opportunities: what are different ways in which I can grow in those spaces and also grow in conversations with other people who are aligned? With Anderson Ranch Arts Center, I was there to teach a workshop, and that was my first workshop that I ever taught. It was a week long and for people of various ages and experiences of photography. I was able to participate in that with them, and also do a talk. This year I’m returning to do more workshops for different age groups, like high school and middle school, students because of the sort of relationship that I’ve grown with [the organization]. The New Yorker is another example. When I had my work published with them, I was introduced to them as an artist, as a photographer, through their audiences. That led into me getting assignments from them every once in a while and helping them visualize their thing within the context of the style that I shoot. I think about what’s next in the sense of, “How can I grow in this specific thing and maximize?”