Before dedicating herself entirely to photography, Rachel worked as a public relations officer for the Ballet Folklorico de Camagüey and the Rosario Cárdenas Dance Company. She and camera in hand she did coverage of events and advertising campaigns. She comes from the computer world, which has paved the way for her in the digital imaging era.
His photos were exhibited in the collective exhibition they are immensewhich was held at Arts Santa Mónica, Barcelona, Spain, and at the Murillo Cultural Warehouse, Necohea, Argentina, during 2019. In 2021, she participated, along with four other Cuban photographers, in the exhibition nothing is temporarywhich was based on the “Fotojenia” National Photography Festival, Jerez de la Frontera, Spain.
Until now, the work of Rachel García is characterized by the counterpoint between the construction of the image and the snapshot found; in both operations the vocation prevails minimal.
Here he tells us about his beginnings, his searches and his aesthetic affiliations:
I was born in Camagüey, on July 5, 1997. From a very young age I had links with the arts. My first contact was with dance; later I acquired a great passion for the plastic arts. This manifestation helped me channel feelings and express myself visually and emotionally in difficult times, after my parents’ divorce.
When I finished high school, I studied Computer Science, a complex career that lasted almost four years, which was given halfway, because we lacked technology, and practical classes were hardly taught.
Then I got the social service, and I worked as a webmaster in the Digital Newsroom of Radio Chain Agramonte. This is how my professional life began. There I had my first camera and worked as a photojournalist for two years. Later I began to collaborate with other media, until I came to Havana in 2019.
During that time I took a photography course at the Association Cuban of Social Communicators from Camaguey, and I studied by my means, like until now, every day.
In the capital I decided to dedicate myself completely to photography, together with my friend and colleague Roberto Ruiz, with whom I share similar aesthetic principles. This is how we founded weird studioan artistic and commercial photography project.
My work is the result of conceptualized sketches in a notebook, mostly created scenarios. Many times I have the idea, I make the sketch on a sheet, and in the end I don’t execute it. I think that what I enjoy most in the exercise of photography is thinking and recreating the image in my head.
I also like street photography, letting myself be surprised… although I always know what I want to find. I look for common, simple, everyday scenes, and I try to take home an extract of what I see. I rarely stick with the panoramic image.
Sometimes I go for a walk through the streets of Centro Habana and Old Havana with the aim of achieving some minimalist compositions, a difficult task in the midst of so much “baroque”.
I feel influenced by artists that I reference in my work, such as Alexander Rodchenko, Chema Madoz, Marta María Pérez Bravo, and, above all, Masao Yamamoto.
The fish are the substitution of the human element in most of my photos, a metaphor.
I live from photography, I have experience and I offer services, so I consider myself a photographer. But also an artist in progress. I study, I question myself and I discover myself. I enjoy every creative process.
