Federico Gama

Biography:

Federico Gama was born in Mexico City in 1963. He studied journalism in UNAM. He has been a documentary photographer of urban themes since 1988. His work is widely recognized. He was awarded first prize in the 1st Puerto Rico Photography Biennale (1998); The National Cultural Photojournalism "Fernando Benitez" Award (1999); Honorable mention in the 1st Photojournalism Biennale of the New Latin American Journalism Foundation in Colombia (2001), and was one of the winners of the 10th Photography Biennale of INBA-CONACULTA in Centro de la Imagen. During the tour of the exhibition of this biennale, he won the Audience Award in Mexico City and Oaxaca. He was a fellow of the Young Creators Grant program of FONCA in 1997. He has had 15 individual exhibitions and 22 collective exhibitions in Mexico, Italy, Argentina and Germany.

Statement:

I don’t see myself as a documentary photographer but as a creative author that interprets life and confronts his point of view with others (what I think and believe about a certain issue). I have always been interested in urban themes regarding youth identity, the youngster’s look and cultural migrations. Each project leads to the next one and they end up intertwined. My first documentary work was done in Islas Marias, a federal prison located in an isolated group of islands in the Pacific, where I was fascinated by the garments, tattoos and the confinement in a jail with no bars. After that I did a work on people that make and get tattoos made in the Tepito quarter in Mexico City (1994-1995), a place in which illegality is part of the everyday life.

I understood that tattoos are an element of identity and decided to do Historias en la Piel (Stories on Skin, 1996-1998) a work in which I built a visual context for the motivations of each character to draw a picture on their skins. During the process for this work I noticed that some youngsters had cholo tattoos, which seemed strange since cholo culture comes from the border with the USA, nonetheless, I slowly realized that it had taken hold in the very heartland of Mexico, in Ciudad Nezahualcoyotl. That is how "The Cholos of Neza York or the Expansion of Chicano Culture in Mexico" (1997-2000) was born. This project deals with the phenomenon of cultural migration, of how culture travels with people and is transformed, spawning diverse lifestyles. As a way to exemplify the essentials of being a cholo in Nezahualcoyotl and show the response of youngsters to changes in fashion, I made a work dealing with the language of the fashion magazines and the barrio: "Top Models, portraits of la Vida Loca" (2000-2002), where I documented the details of the cholo look, these graphic elements that are the nodal points of a tribe (a way of life or culture), that allow us to see how the concept of street fashion becomes a way of life with all of its consequences.