Genesis Baez

I'm Jordan Weitzman and you're listening to Magic Hour. It was so nice getting together with Genesis Buys to catch up and hear about what she's been up to. We first met at Scout, he had a few summers ago, a time when she was just coming out of grad school at Yale. Since then, she started teaching at Pratt in the new school. Has a book coming out next year with Capricius. In this past month, open to show with Jenny Calivas and Justin Curlin Studio Space called "Silt of each other." Genesis work often deals with her roots growing up between the US and Puerto Rico. It's sometimes surreal, other times more steep than reality, and always leaves the meaning of what you're looking at open to interpretation. When I was in graduate school, I only made video and moving images for a while. Then I realized that I could do something similar with photographs that I could, instead of the image moving, I could have the viewer's eye move throughout the frame. Was it more of a challenge or a different kind of. It almost feels like mission impossible or something, to create movement with something that is so inherently still and frozen, or literally freezing movement. For example, I'm thinking about the picture of the two girls leaning into each other at a restaurant whispering into each other's ear, and one is tracing the edge of a cup of water. That to me feels like it's so much about movement in a bunch of ways. First of all, your eye is moving around the rectangle, the picture plane. There are things coming in from the edges of the picture, and multiple things are kind of illuminated throughout the picture. Your eye is literally moving around. Then there's the girl who is tracing the rim of the cup of water, and then all of a sudden you start to kind of fill in the blank of that sound. I'm like, "Oh, can you make a photograph about sound? Can you make a photograph about movement?" That's really interesting. Then of course, there's the whisper. I love that photo. It's an amazing photo, by the way. It's interesting to hear you talk about movement and sound in terms of what it's about. That whisper, to me, I always go to the whisper first. That's the thing that keeps you going back. I've been reading this amazing Philip Gustin book. He's interviews with him, and there's just this great section where he's talking about the enigma and what it means. To me, it's the enigma that keeps you coming back to something, putting back to an image, whether it's a painting or a photo. That picture really does that. The whisper, the secret, you want to know what it is, but it never resolves itself. It never resolves itself and you have to complete it. Maybe not complete it because it never really resolves itself, but then you become part of you have to fill in the blank. You have to then try to imagine what that whisper sounds like or feels like. What's interesting is that I've never thought about it in terms of the sonic relationship. Yeah, totally. One of the things that drew me to video, too, was this whole other dimension that was sound. It's sound to me is fascinating because it's invisible, but it's still present. That's something that I think a lot about when I'm making photographs. How can I make a photograph of something that is invisible? Or how can I use the visible world to trace something invisible? That makes sense. That photograph of the girls and the restaurant and the whisper, which is actually called the sound of a circle, that was my bridge. That was my transition photo from making video clips for a year and being really lost and not really. I was doing what I was doing and not kind of unsure if I wanted to be making video work or go into filmmaking. How did you go about making, starting to make photos? Just talking and sticking on that one in particular. That photo looks real. It looks like it's really happening. Was it like, yeah? You're asking me, was that something that I directed or was it something that I responded to? That was just happening and I took a picture of it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so actually I had been trying to make a picture of a whisper for many years and I tried it with myself and somebody else. I tried it with a couple other people. It didn't work. It just like wasn't. I don't really know what I was looking for but whatever image would emerge didn't resonate with me. I tried that picture with those two girls, Lily and Brianna, who were teenagers living in New Haven. We tried making that picture in my studio. It didn't work. Then one day, we went out for lunch because I casted them and to make a bunch of pictures. We're going to get lunch before we started making photos. All of a sudden, after we finished lunch, the light moved into the restaurant. It was hitting in the right way and everyone's car was down a little bit because we're all relaxed and we just said, "Booed." I directed the image in that way. I kind of moved the plates away and I was like, "Okay, Lily, can you lean into Brianna and tell her a secret?" And Brianna started to trace the cup of water by herself so it was both somewhere between directing and improvising. Yeah, interesting. Interesting. It's funny how it almost doesn't matter. Because the picture looks the way it looks, which is sort of the only thing that matters. But it is interesting when it happens. I think something that photography uniquely allows you to work with. All of the things that are unfolding and presenting themselves to you all around you all the time. I like to invite those things in. For example, there were crumbs on the table that actually mimic these Christmas lights that are in the background, which also mimic her little yellow hair clips. That's an incredible chance. But then I do the intentionality of starting an image with a gesture or with an idea and kind of bringing some parameters to then kind of improvise within. I relate to that. It's like a starting point. It's a starting point. Yeah, it's a starting point. And I don't know if it's the same in your experience, but it's never usually what you expect. I think that's the exciting part. Yeah, and there's so much that you can't see in the moment of making a photograph because when you're looking through the viewfinder, you can't look at all of the things at once. I'm focusing on making sure that the person's face is in focus. And then when I look at the photograph, I'm realizing there was so much more that I couldn't see in the moment. Yeah, it's like that free-lander thing. It has a really great quote to it. Exactly. He's a really generous medium. Yeah. You just wanted like the dog or the uncle in front of the car or something and you end up getting all this other stuff. You know, photography can sometimes feel like such an extension of sight of what it was that you were looking at. But you really need, again, you can't look at it. Like I'm looking at your living room right now. And I can only really look at one thing at a time and then I see things in the periphery. Right? But a photograph can put everything kind of in focus, right? Or with the slowness of a photograph, I can kind of look at everything at once. So it's actually not exactly the way we see our eyes function. Right. That makes sense. Yeah. This was actually David Hawke, knees obsession with those joiners. You know those photos? No. Like he would like, he was literally super interested in exactly what you're describing. And literally how we see. He was like obsessed with the cubists and like, you know, that, I don't know, sort of, I don't know, description of how we see and brought that into photography. And so he would, he would, he took many photos of, let's say, this room. And then and join them together. So you had this tapestry of photos. - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yes, exactly. I know exactly where you're talking about. That they're like a collage. - Exactly. - Yes, yes, yes. - And then it's a collage of like details in the thing because yeah, of like, and he was literally seeing exactly what you're describing. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly like flat, he's like flattening all of the perspectives like into one. - Yeah. - Sure. - Mm-hmm. - Yeah, which then also kind of reminds me a little bit of cubism, if you think about it. - Yeah. - Like cubism kind of flattening all of these various perspectives into one. - Yeah, sure. - Yeah. (laughing) So that's attention. (laughing) - Tangents are good. Yeah, tangents are good. Because this is, you know, doing these kinds of conversations, I feel like it's very similar to taking photos. - Mm-hmm. - Like you, you come and you can do your homework, you could have all your preconceived ideas. - Mm-hmm. - And then, you know, you're talking with someone. And you know, you start talking about sound. And I had not thought of sound in at all. Like it's not, it wasn't in my homework. But it's super interesting. So, it's always this, this push and pull between, do you go in the direction that you initially had intended or do you follow the conversation or follow me? And for me, that really resonates with the process of art making. It's like, whatever plan you have is just to get you out the door, you know, and get you started. But then, the things that end up emerging, which usually you end up kind of picking up with time. It's like you make something. And the more you pay attention to it, like over time, over the years, it just keeps revealing and conjuring new ideas, which is fascinating. And those are like usually a way more interesting than like the original thing that you thought the work was going to be about. - Totally. So, let me ask you a question. So, you were just talking about, you know, sort of moving from, I don't know, film to photography. And, you know, we were just talking about that one particular image, which is, I don't know, it has surreal qualities, but it's very steeped in reality. - Mm-hmm. - Mm-hmm. - But you have, so that's, I feel like one mode of your picture making, but then you also have another mode, which is more abstract, more surreal, more dreamy. Where, when did that other mode come into? - Mm-hmm. - Being. - When I'm making pictures, for example, with mirrors, which are maybe some of the ones that you may be thinking about when you ask me that question, like there are pictures of like mirrors in snow or like a mirror leaning against this green wall. And then, you know, it's casting all sorts of crazy shadows. For me, first and foremost, it feels like a relief to work very slowly. Like there is, I enjoy also working alone, as well as working with people. - Yes. - Like I'm very, I just, I feel very split in that way. Like I can be very social, but I can also be very, kind of hermetic. - Well, we are still on the same page. - Really? - Yeah, I've been thinking about that a lot lately too. - Yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I actually feel like I need both. And I feel like these quiet, these processes that allow me to be more hermetic and quiet energize me. But anyhow, yeah, those pictures, I actually kind of think about them in terms of like a fragmentation. There's like a fragmentation of like the picture and we have like multiple perspectives. Actually, this kind of relates to what we were just talking about a minute ago. Like multiple perspectives are being presented to us and like flattened into one picture plane. There is also, I just keep thinking about this picture specifically of like the mirrors in the snow. Like there's this disorientation that's happening where it's like, are we looking at the sky or is this like a cloud scape, a sky scape or is this foam or is this like the ground covered in snow? And that disorientation feeling. Yeah, like it kind of ties into some of the things that I'm thinking about in the other picture. It's like I feel like they're all kind of talking about similar ideas, but usually using different languages which relates to my lived experience, right? Of like occupying various identities, which we all do of course, but specifically for me like growing up speaking multiple languages, growing up like existing in various cultures simultaneously. What language did he speak growing up? Spanish. I spoke Spanish. He spoke Spanish at home. Yeah, I spoke Spanish before I spoke English actually. Oh really? Yeah, so this kind of like oscillating between various languages and modes of expressions, kind of how my brain works. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's kind of like a long, we're on about explaining it, but it feels very natural to me. Right, I'm really interested in that in the whole together and alone thing because oftentimes you get into it like an introvert, extrovert discussion and you sort of need to pick sides. But I, you know, I feel like so often I think of, you know, why can't you be a bit of both? Mm-hmm, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, having both those kind of, I don't know, predispositions or-- Yeah, totally. And it just depends on the contacts and depends on the conditions that you're in. Like sometimes I really, yeah, like I really like crave that social connection or like a picture or an idea really needs that set of conditions in order for interesting things to emerge. And then sometimes, sometimes it can be simpler than that. Sometimes it can be like a piece of cut out paper on a wall. Sure. You know, it's so interesting that we're talking about this because sometimes you have certain things you're thinking about, you know? And I don't know. You don't, I don't know. You don't make the assumption that someone else is thinking about them too. But in this, you know, in my book, as I was working on the edit, thinking about these exact same ideas and how I hadn't thought about them and making the pictures, but in putting them together and thinking about the relationships between the two, it almost became all about that for me. You know, be-- and then finding these other kind of, I don't know, contrasts or relationships, you know, being with people and being alone, being inside, outside, you know, being inside and being outside, being at home, and then wandering in the world. And yeah. And it's so interesting to see how other people express those same ideas like the way you're speaking about with those two kind of modes of picture making. Like that kind of, I don't know, seeing stuff in the world versus construction or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, and sometimes they kind of need each other or something. Like I'm thinking about, they feel like-- OK, I'm going to bring it back to sound again. They feel like different notes or different instruments or something, right? Like in a composition, sometimes one picture or one kind of picture, right? Whether it's like the ones outside versus the ones inside or the more abstract ones versus the ones like base in a more kind of recognizable reality that they kind of exalt each other and you kind of need both. Yeah. Yeah. To really appreciate the other. Absolutely. So does that-- I don't know-- dissolve this relate to how you edit? Or how you think about bookmaking? Oh, yeah. So that's all very new to me. So bookmaking is very new to me. I'm so excited about it. You're working on a new book now. I'm working on a new book. You want the capricious-- the capricious photo-- Is it the photo book award? Yeah, the capricious photo award. Capricious photo award. Yeah, yeah, yeah, which is an award to make a book with capricious publishing. So I start that next year in 2023. Amazing. I am so excited. Yeah. So the book is going to come out next year, but you've started working on it? So no, no, no. So we start working on it next year. Yeah, because this year there were two winners. Roberto Tondopo, who is based in Mexico and myself. And Roberto starts their book now. So whenever they finish Roberto's book, then I begin making mine. So my book probably won't be out for at least another year, if not a little bit longer. But I'm so excited. Yeah, for sure. It's a great thing to look forward to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you have any titles in mind yet? Oh my god, I have no idea. No idea. But I feel-- Like, it feels, when I think about the actual book, I send something blue. Like, I just keep thinking blue. I mean, I'm, you know, for-- - Yeah, you guys can see me, but like, I'm wearing a blue one, see. (laughing) - Like a blue jumpsuit, I love blue. - Very exciting. And you just did that little publication with-- - Yeah. - Is it Matarile? - Yeah, Matarile. Yeah, Matarile edition is, yeah, so I made this on Zine. - Book with Maitan Naranwhosangawa, who's a genius. She's amazing. - Yeah, I met her the other day, Dashwood. - She's incredible. - And she, that process of editing that Zine with her was such an education in bookmaking, and also in my own work, like the things I was able to see (laughing) that I couldn't see before, just from decontextualizing and recontextualizing images was so fascinating. It's like, oh, I thought I knew what this image was about, or I thought I saw everything there was to see in this picture, and then suddenly, now it's next to this other picture, and I'm seeing all this other stuff. That felt like a really great kind of experience in editing and bookmaking. That's, it got me all excited about this new book that's coming out with Capricius. - Yeah. - Like, I got a little taste of it. - For sure. (laughing) (upbeat music) - I'm Jordan Weitzman, and you're listening to my conversation with Genesis Buys that we recorded in New York, to find out more about the show and our books. Visit us at magicourphoto.org. - When I sent some of the Zines to Puerto Rico over the summer to my family, and then checking the tracking and seeing that it was like, in my aunt's mailbox, waiting for her to come home from work. And that was so accessible, and it was just like moving around the world. And suddenly my family could see my work not on a screen, but hold it and have it in their home. - For sure. - So you still have quite a bit of family there? - Yeah, most of my family is there. My parents and my brother are here in the States, and I actually have some cousins that I just learned about the summer and met who live here in the Lower East Side, weren't far, but I kind of live around the corner from here. And we reconnected. And my god, my godmother is in Chicago. And yeah, so I have some family in the States, but the majority of my family is in Puerto Rico. - And how are they all doing lately? - Yeah, they're okay. Like in the immediate sense. I mean, it's early October as we are recording this. So there was Hurricane Fiona just hit Puerto Rico a couple of weeks ago, and a lot of people are still without power. It's very intense. My family regained power and water. And they're doing as okay as one can be at this time, but it's like, it's very stressful. - Yeah. - It's very stressful. But they're okay. - Okay, well that is like-- - Thanks for asking. - So what else have you been up to lately? You teach as well, right? - I teach. - Where do you teach? - I teach. I add junked at both a Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. - Yeah. - And at Parsons. - Yeah. - Here in Manhattan, I teach undergrads and grad students. Teach photography, teach video. I'm teaching three classes this semester. I'm tired. - Yeah. (laughing) - It's a lot of work, but I love my students. I'm really, really great students this semester. I mean, every semester I have such great students, but I've met some really special people in the last month. And then next semester, I'm gonna actually be like temporarily relocating or splitting my time between Williams Town, Massachusetts, and Brooklyn because I'm gonna be teaching at Williams College. I'm very excited about, so I was invited. It's like a guest's professor there for the semester. And as you might know, I grew up in Massachusetts, or part of my life, I spent in Massachusetts. So I'm actually really excited to be, even though when I lived there, I couldn't wait to get out, but I'm really excited to kind of go back there and actually make some work there. - Mm-hmm. - Oh yeah. - Yeah, yeah, so that's on the horizon. And speaking of being both extrovert and a hermit, I'm really looking forward to, yeah, being a bit of a hermit in Western mass. - Yeah, I think that those times of isolation can be really generative. And with the book coming up to, it would be really good. - Where more specifically did you grow up in mass? - I grew up in a town called Adelboro, which is about 40 minutes south of Boston. It's on the east side of Massachusetts. So it's fairly different to where I'll be living next month. - The town I grew up in was like at one time was very industrial, lots of factories, like a small factory town outside Boston. - Mm-hmm. - Yeah. - Interesting. - Where is Dorchester? - Dorchester is part of the greater Boston metro area. - Oh, okay. - Yeah. - Have you been to Dorchester? - You know, I haven't, but I don't know why Dorchester days just popped into my head. The Eugene Richards photo book. - Oh, yeah. - It's an amazing book and it's one of the first books that someone who, someone turned me onto it. Her name was Marilyn and her name is Marilyn. And yeah, she was super important to me. First getting into photography, we would hang out and she'd show me photo books. And that was one of the first ones that she showed me that really kind of, I don't know, got me going. - Oh, interesting. - All pictures from Dorchester, but like, you know. Beautiful, beautiful and also hard, very hard pictures. - Yeah, yeah. Interesting. That reminds me of one of the first photo books that got me really excited, which is a really a really complicated book for many reasons, but it was, first day, it's the East 100th Street, actually, because it was one of the first photo books where I saw Puerto Rican people, like in photographs. So I can relate to what you're describing. - How do you think about it now? - Well, I think it's complicated, right, for a person who wasn't from Spanish Harlem to be going into these apartments and peoples lives were very difficult. And there was the pictures depict a lot of suffering. And yeah, like I just, I wonder, it just feels complicated, right, for someone who wasn't experiencing that suffering to kind of go in there and depict that suffering, right? And then ultimately, like, what, where does the book go? Where does the photographs live afterwards? Do the people who are in them see them? But one thing that is kind of interesting about those photographs is that they were actually used in a lot of tenant law organizing. And tenant, excuse me, like tenants' rights organizing as kind of proof of like, look how difficult people's lives are, right? And one of the many reasons is because landlords are exploiting people, right? And there are very little laws protecting tenants like this needs to change. So it's interesting that those photographs were actually kind of part of that. - Yeah, and they had some kind of positive effect. - Yeah, yeah. - But also, I'm just thinking of this thing that someone told me recently about Jean-Luc Godard, who just passed away. Someone wrote this little piece who studied under the filmmaker and photographer, Babette Mongolt, who is French. And I think New Godard. And she was speaking about him. And this student said something like, you know, how could you speak? He's such a showviness, like an animal. How could you really praise him? And Babette said something like, yes, he's a pig, but you have to look at all of his films. He's a pig, but you have to look at all of his films. And it's almost like a similar, I'm not saying Bruce Davidson. I'm not making that analogy of him being a pig. I mean, she's a lovely man. But, you know, even with work that might be problematic, you know, looking through it, a new lens, it's okay to hold those two together. - Absolutely. - Yeah, yeah, right. And we have critical thinking skills. were like, you know, sensitive people, we can kind of, you know, I don't think we need to like censor that work or like not show it or not look at it, right? Like, necessarily, but I think it is important to kind of, yeah, like be critical of it, but I can still like look at it. Right. Definitely. Maybe learn something from it. But, you know, it's interesting actually that like going back to your book about Dorchester, right? That like another kind of overlap aside from like maybe the time and when these pictures were made was that the parameter was place, right? It was like Dorchester, the neighborhood of Dorchester and Boston, the neighborhood of, you know, Spanish Harlem and Manhattan. Like that was the parameter. And that like, this idea of place is something that kind of haunts me in my, in my work. And it's kind of central to my work actually, even if like a place isn't directly depicted in my images. So when I started making photographs, place was my, a specific place was my container, right? I was going back to Puerto Rico or kind of like the first big kind or big, but like the first kind of substantial body of work I made. I made in Puerto Rico. I was living in Boston after college, which is where I went to college also. And I was working, you know, whatever like job I could, that I could kind of quit soon after and save up a little bit of money. And then I would go to Puerto Rico and make photographs there. And then I would come back and I was making photographs like in my family's house and on their land basically. Whereas now I think one of the things I'm working through is how complicated the idea of place can be when, for example, I've been reading the poetry of Warsson Shire. And she has this poem called Home. And one of the lines says, "No one leaves home unless home will let you stay." And this idea of home not letting you stay and like a place not letting you stay really resonates with me. And thinking about like my family's migration to the United States from Puerto Rico. And the very, the layers and generations of migration that have happened like before my lifetime in the present and surely into the future of people leaving Puerto Rico. And like how complex the idea of home or belonging to age, your graphical place is in our current times. Because of climate change, because of various political crises, right? It's important. It's important. Yeah. Yeah. And can you like take a place, like in a place, live inside of you somehow? You know. Right. So not necessarily dealing with the actual place itself, but more as this, I don't know, something that is inside you that you can manifest wherever you are. Exactly. Like the mark of a place on you. You know, like how has a place shaped you, for example. And can place be conjured? You know, anywhere like my mom has this like line green wall at her living room. That is so interesting. To me, that just like looks like the jungle that used to be in her mother's yard. And you know, or can like a sense of belonging be conjured like between instead of belonging to a place like can you conjure belonging like between people, you know, or like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like what other rarely well alternate ways of belonging, exist, or can we be a part of right without place? Right. That's what's floating around. Floating around up there. It's interesting that you say that because I've been collecting images of dust storms actually like Saharan dust. Do you know about this? No. Okay, so every year, I think multiple times a year, Saharan dust from the Saharan desert, really, really tiny ground down particles of sand get swept up into the air and carried across the Atlantic ocean and spread throughout like Caribbean nations, sometimes like the south of the United, it's the southeast of the United States. And I first learned about it in Puerto Rico when I noticed that like the sky would be really pale blue on some days. I'm like, what is that? Is that he's that small? Like I'm having a harder time breathing than usual. And then I realized that it was literal earth from the other side of the world. It's kind of carried in a cloud across the ocean. And then kind of dispersed throughout. And it was just kind of this really interesting metaphor, you know, in a way for like, yeah, place can be watery. And move that's crazy. I never heard of that. That's what that's very it's wild to think about. Is that actually true? How does that actually? Yeah, yeah, it's true. We can look it up. I can show you like gifts. I have like a whole folder of like NASA gifts on my hard drive. It's crazy because it's really beautiful. Like the image, the image like the meteorological image is like really fascinating. But on the ground, it's like really hard for people like my brother, for example, like it bothers his lungs and anyone who's kind of asthmatic like, you know, it's not yeah, like it's harmful to people. Crazy. Yeah, like you're literally breathing in earth. Yeah. I mean, you make a lot of work about clouds in the sky. It's a big, it's a big, it's a big subject matter for you. Totally. Totally anything that is like shape shifting. Like I love things that are kind of constantly shape shifting or like resist a single form. Yeah, clouds are like that for me. And then these dust clouds are that for me, right? It's just like place that is constantly shape shifting. Yeah, love it. I have to say this has been so nice doing this with you today. Thank you. Yeah, I feel like we went in all kinds of interesting directions that, I don't know, yeah, I hadn't thought of it. And it's always how it happened. It's always how it happens. It's like that our practice. It's like making art. Totally. Totally. Thanks so much. Thank you. That was my conversation with Genesis Buzz that we recorded in New York. This episode is produced by me, Jordan Weitzman, and was edited by Ellen Payne Smith. Original music for the show by Adam Fine Gold. To find out more about the show and our books that we've published over the past year and a half, visit us at magichourphoto.org and follow us on Instagram at Magic Hour Podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in. Happy holidays and see you next year. [BLANK_AUDIO]