Interview with Vera Saldivar de Lira | MONOVISIONS - Black & White Photography Magazine

MonoVisions Black & White Photo Contest 2025

Vera Saldivar de Lira (Aguascalientes, Mexico 1993) is a visual artist and photographer living and working in Southern California and New York City. She employs different mediums to explore the material realities and social relationships that define the perception and use of space, as well as the production process and materiality of the image. She was named one of the 30 under 30 women photographers to watch in 2022 by Artpil.com; her works have been featured in Aint Bad, Zone Magazine, LA Times en Español, Museé Magazine and exhibited at the Royal Society of American Art (NYC) the International Center of Photography school (NYC), Museum of the Moving Image (NYC), Experimental Photo Festival (ES), Millepiani gallery (IT), the Glasgow Gallery of Photography (UK), Rome Art Week 2022 and more recently at the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art (CICA Museum) in South Korea. Vera is a 2022 recipient of the Curious Publishing’s BIPOC + Queer Publishing Fund with a forthcoming publication expected by the end of 2023. With a background in Architecture, Vera holds a one-year certificate in Creative Practices from ICP
and an MFA in Advanced Photographic Studies from ICP/Bard College where she received the Arnold Newman Scholarship (2017-2018) and a Director’s Fellowship (2018-2020).

– How and when did you become interested in photography?

I remember being curious about photography from an early age. My parents used to carry around a video camera and disposable cameras everywhere to take pictures of family vacations and early family life. I started wondering how they could decide when to start taking photos or recording and what to shoot. Disposable cameras became a regular toy for me, being a deeply shy person since childhood, I hid in corners where nowhere would see me and waited for something amazing to happen so I could photograph it but after spending all that time hiding I ended up being
more fascinated by the hiding spots. Then I studied Architecture in college and decided to expand my photography practice on the relationship between space, materials, and image-
making.

– Is there any artist/photographer who inspired your art?

My work is grounded in my relationship with space and how the material conditions around me shape context and perception. But some artists I admire and consider major influences are Gordon Matta-Clark, Atget, John Divola, Gerry Johansson, Do Ho Suh, Roy DeCarava, Ed Ruscha, and Graciela Iturbide to name a few. – Why do you work in black and white rather than color?
I believe every series is different, and black and white or color should be a tool for facilitating the reading of the work, and these decisions should be dictated by what the artist intends to convey in their work. While I used to do a lot of color work, I think I work best when thinking in black and white. For me, working in color is similar to choosing the type of finishes you
want in a house, but working in black and white is more similar to working on more structural processes by bending light and tones.

– How much preparation do you put into taking a photograph/series of photographs?

My process is usually long and slow because most of my work is conceptual. There is a good amount of planning and research to figure out the concept of each series. Once I get this done there is an experimental phase to figure out technicalities. At the same time, most of my black-and-white work is very intuitive and process-based, either as a response to the way the camera I’m using works or as a response to the place I’m at, usually as a way of confronting self-awareness and displacement, and a way of creating a hiding spot behind the camera and in spaces or scenes that nobody pays attention to.

– Where is your photography going? What projects would you like to accomplish?

I am excited about expanding this body of work and eventually publishing it as a photo book. I think these images are in a way intimate and perhaps working on a small scale would make sense. I am also working on various interdisciplinary projects, and although the process has been very slow, I look forward to showing some progress soon.

Website: https://www.vera-saldivar.com/