Ada Trillo

Ada Trillo’s work in photography is mainly focused on topics like race, violence, social classes and migration. Justice is very close to the heart of her images. Her vision is deeply defined by what every human relationship should have: dignity. Through  empathy she approaches  her protagonists . Along  her photographies we are confronted with scenes where humanity -in the context of injustices or violence- stounds out in extreme beauty despite the horrors of reality.

Regina De Con Cossío: You have long questioned the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words”. Perhaps as in no other artistic disciplines, images are related to words in order to create meanings. I’m not saying that they depend on them, but they have made a link that affects the viewer. On some occasion you mentioned that you have dyslexia and that it is a problem for you to resolve this connection. How does this relationship between images and words influence your photographic production process?

Ada Trillo: So for me dyslexia is not a problem necessarily, is an asset, I have learned that disabilities, because I have actually three disabilities, are something that you can catastrophize on, feel sorry for yourself or you can do something different. I have a different eye, so my eye is a little bit different from a person that perhaps has a completely linear way of mind, right? So that’s why my compositions are a little bit more different. What I do for the dyslexia, it has been—again—an asset and it makes me closer to the people because what I do is write in my journals their story, or I do it with my iPhone, recording  and from there it gets transcribe into English or whatever  language of the exhibit word I am going to be showing right? So it is the person’s own words, not mine, and then making that person words sounds pretty.

RDCC: It’s more affective, right?

AT: Yeah it’s their words, it’s them. It’s a first person, instead of me putting them as the word that I hate “subject”. For me they are the ” protagonists”.

RDCC: When you photograph a socially difficult moment (The Beast, Black Live Matters, etc.) ethical and moral situations are triggered in many directions. I imagine, for example, questions like: should I portray this or that? Why show this image and not the other? What other questions go to your head when you go to photograph events like these?

AT: The first is dignity. Am I giving dignity to this person? The other one is, just to give you an example from one project, with the Sexual Workers Project  in Juárez. It was very important to me that I had a close relationship with them, that I was just not this outsider, that I was there listening because sometimes people just want to be listened to, they don’t want advices, they don’t want you to put you to sense or whatever they just want to be listened an put attention to clearly, do you know? And being able to put all that pain out in a safe space, and I linking that safe space, and then they trust me with me taking the picture and they know, based on our conversation, there’s mutual trust, that I’m not going to trick them or do something bad with those images, and that’s why I’m also very protective of the How did I get there project and it’s under code only for people in the educational purposes in my website because I don’t want anything, a third person coming into manipulating the image of a person that I care for a lot. 

RDCC: How do you feel to capture a painful maybe inconvenient or even dangerous “moment” or scene?

AT: It’s capturing essence and documenting history, right? History must be documented, otherwise the same atrocities keep happening again and again and again. For instance, in the case of How did I get here project, what do I do with these pictures? What is the responsibility with them? What was the responsibility, I don’t know if you know this already is we built a safe house in Juárez with all  the proceeds of those pictures, so hundred percent of the pictures of the money of these pictures went, for the first exhibit, to build these shelter in Juárez for the women to be reunited with their kids that “El DIF” have taken away, and it was through the Oblate Nuns, (Las Madres Oblatas del Sagrado Redentor), it was with them that we build the safe house.

And what do you or what do I also do for the community then? For example with  “Coco” we’re still friends and I got her out of that situation for life because her picture is in the Museum of Art, in Philadelphia. I felt that, as a thank you to her, I would make responsable for her and her leaving  that awful place. In Juárez is horrible, she was in the street, in the floor, in the worst conditions you can imagine,  and I have to get her outta there, and that’s my duty to her forever, until I died.

RDCC: How do you deal with the fact that some of your images portraying complicated events will become cultural products that can eventually be considered art, can be displayed in a gallery or can be sold?

AT: That is a great question because I don’t know if you’re aware of this but in the documentary world there’s a lot of rules and one of those rules is that you cannot feed the people that you photographe and I have a huge problem with that rule, so that is why I consider myself an artist, because if I took a picture of a boy lets say in the shelter 2 days ago because I travel with them, I don’t just stay in a hotel, I travel with them, I stay with time, I eat with them, everything with them, so if I took a picture—let’s say two days ago—and this boy run out of money and now he’s crying because he’s so hungry and he’s an unaccompanied minor traveling by himself so since I are took a picture, if I am a documentarist or a journalist I can’t help him under certain rules but if I am an artist I can do whatever the hell I want. Also for a journalist they’ve been to school, they gone to school, they pay their dues, they work for newspapers, they have a long training. My training is or my background is in art and things should be remember like,  I mean Graciela Iturbide for instance, Manuela Álvarez Bravo for instance, documenting horrible situations and still they are considered art it depends on the practice and do you how you feel yourself.

RDCC:  Many  of your photos capture socially difficult moments in many respects they go be confused with images of photojournalism but they are not, so what difference do you find between your photos and those of photojournalism?

AT: Photojournalism is in color and it seems very rare that they let black and white, when I show in a magazine or in a publication like The Guardian or some other journals, it’s stablish that my work will be shown as black and white and it’s like a certain, because I don’t work for the magazine or the newspaper, you know?  I am independent so the black and white you use it more like an artistic, I don’t know in historical view to the work versus color, which is my next project, it is in color, or I am trying to make it in color but I’m having an extremely difficult time. I think that’s how you measure, also if you use the lofter or the Da Vinci rule. What rules are you using to create the work, where are you putting the subject, in the side, in the middle or what composition are you making because you can easily be portraying drama? I can be portraying a very horrible situation like “The beast”  for instance when the train is actually moving but it’s my choice, and my eye, and my training, which is okay, what’s the position of this image, where can I find it, what do I want to say with this image, and what I told you before does it work like a painting? Does it work back and a bit around?

RDCC: In social sciences it is said that when a researcher approaches the subject of study he alteres it. Do you agree with this sentence or  how do you think the presence of a photographer like you influences the events you capture?

AT: No, because I travel. As I told you, as one of them I become part of the community and I travel alone so it’s like a group of 7000 people in a caravan are not going to change over me. They are not because they are the majority so if I become the minority I have to apply the rules that they establish and follow them. Even in this community, it is a community where they are the majority and I am the minority, how do I integrate myself? As much as possible. I mean I’m never going to be one of them and how do I integrate myself as much as possible and we can connect to good human beings, because that is what we are, she’s a very good human being and I am a good human, being we are interacting and we are building this beautiful friendship does it matter what she does and doesn’t matter what I do.

RDCC: Your work largely revolves around the concept of border. Geographic, political, social boundaries. But your images are also on a border: that of photography and photojournalism. The one with the image and the word. What do borders mean to you?

AT: For me yes, those are “borders” but it is also not the word just in a geographical way. If  you translate from the Spanish “Frontera” more in the sense of edges, or barriers,  you can see how the concept also points out a sense of classism.  A huge problem that exists so largely in Central America, Mexico and overall Latin America. That is comparable also with  racism in the United States. For example, when you see people with darker skin, the opportunities that are given to them by government and all that are different.  The truth is I see borders more as a matter of social justice. As we are almost in 2022, is this like the legacy that I want to leave?

For example, this girl Silvia, just to give you an example: she fell, hit her spine and they did not give her medical attention in the hospital in the insurance of Juárez because she was a sex worker. If they had given her treatment, she would not have had to be on crutches for the rest of her life. However, she got infected and they did a horrible thing, it is that classism is that judgment when it was the job of the receptionist’s nurse to give her a number and let her enter to the doctor, but only because of her physical appearance she was denied that she had a very serious spine problem with crutches forever.