Marisol Mendez is a photographer and researcher from Cochabamba, Bolivia, whose practice examines the tension between truth and fiction, and the relationship between what a photograph constructs and the (sur)reality it draws from. Driven by research-led and self-initiated projects, she questions traditional modes of representation and weaves narratives with multiple layers of meaning. At the heart of her artistic pursuit is a sustained exploration of human experience. Marisol is guided by a desire to build genuine connections with those on the other side of her lens. Her objective is to capture the intimacy of shared experience, the tenderness or friction of mutual recognition. Working across a range of visual languages, she embraces the horizontality of images to trace connections between individual experience, collective memory, and imagination. Rooted in the landscapes and folklore of her culture, her work oscillates between candid and staged, naturalistic and mythical. Ultimately, her practice invites viewers to question the stories images tell and the systems of belief they sustain. Mendez has exhibited internationally at institutions and festivals including the Sharjah Biennial 15, Unseen Amsterdam, Format Festival, Getxophoto, and the Athens Photo Festival. Her work has been widely published in outlets such as Wallpaper, Fisheye Magazine, Vogue Italia, Balam, and GUP Magazine. In 2021, MADRE was featured on the cover of The British Journal of Photography. Her practice has received significant recognition, including the Lucie Foundation Fine Art Scholarship, first place in the 2023 Sony World Photography Awards (Professional, Environment category), and the 2021 PhMuseum Photography Grant New Generation Prize. She was selected as a Foam Talent for 2024–25 and published her first photobook, MADRE, with Setanta Books.
This exhibition contains work from her Madre and Padre series.
MADRE interrogates the whitewashed, phallocentric, and colonial representation of womxn in my native Bolivia. The project is an exploration of the feminine as it wrestles with religious and cultural interpretations that are dogmatic and reductionist, confining womxn to either the image of the holy Virgin Mary or the sinner Mary Magdalene. Weaving together Andean folklore and Catholic iconography, the book spotlights the complexities of contemporary Bolivian identity and reflects on the country’s diverse and multifaceted culture.
MADRE also includes archival photographs from my family album that depict female relatives, on which I intervene to subvert their original meaning or add a new layer of symbolism. Ultimately, the archive functions as a bridge to reconnect to my matriarchal lineage.
Situated between fiction and documentary, the images paint a world interconnected by physical and mythological elements—a dance between the upper and inner worlds of Incan mythology. Here, womxn experience change, loss, decline, and death.
Preconceived biases or prejudices about the womxn in the portraits are challenged by their piercing gaze, which returns that of the viewer. I spent hours conversing with my subjects about patriarchal and one-dimensional representations of womanhood and collaborating with them on how they would like to be photographed. The outcome is a protest in the face of unjust depictions that erase the nuances of what it means to be a womxn in Bolivia with an inherited past of colonisation, patriarchy, and interlacing faiths and religions.
PADRE is a personal and political excavation of masculinity, approached through a feminist lens. Rooted in my family history and shaped by my Latin American heritage, the project interrogates the embedded structures of machismo that govern men’s behaviors and the emotional landscapes of those around them. Oscillating between social critique and self-inquiry, Padre traces a lineage of absence, tenderness, violence, and care, mapping the way masculine identity is inherited, performed, and, at times, unlearned.
The project began with a set of letters from my grandfather to my father and uncle. These intimate correspondences unfold like generational echoes, revealing how men within my family struggled to make sense of fatherhood, masculinity, and emotional responsibility. Through them, I became a witness to the contradictions at the heart of patriarchal identity: the longing for connection eclipsed by societal expectations of toughness and emotional restraint; the desire to nurture overtaken by the compulsion to dominate.
In Padre, staged portraits, archival interventions, and symbolic gestures challenge traditional representations of manhood. Hunting, both literal and metaphorical, operates as a central motif, evoking masculine drives toward conquest and control. This narrative is unsettled by images of vulnerability and the fragility of bodies and bonds. Scenes of decay and erosion echo the slow unravelling of hegemonic masculinity, whose ideals persist as ghostly remnants of a past that still haunts the present. By juxtaposing softness with brutality, presence with absence, Padre opens a space for reflection, asking not only what masculinity is, but what it could become.
You can find more of her work at https://www.marisol-mendez.com/
In Collaboration with The Belfast Photo Festival.
This issue is funded by The Arts Council of Northern Ireland.
Abridged is funded by The Arts Council of Northern Ireland and The Arts Council of Ireland.
