SMITHVILLE U.S.A.

Excerpts from an interview with Jorge Sanhueza-Lyon on portrait photography and working in Smithville

Photography for me has always been an excuse to walk up to total strangers and say hello. As cliched at it might sound, the camera serves as the perfect icebreaker. In Smithville, I had the opportunity to meet and photograph about one hundred and fifty total strangers that I am happy to now call friends. Every single one of them was warm and inviting and willing to be vulnerable in front of the camera - willing to share things that maybe they haven't been asked to share in a while.. or ever. To me, that’s the greatest gift anybody can give you - their attention, their time and their stories.

A portrait sitting for me is less about the photograph and more about the moment and the collaborative connection with the person in the photograph. When somebody's in a situation that they feel like they're being paid attention to - that somebody's genuinely interested in what they have to say - it's a lot easier to reveal who you are visually. And it can disarm us of our projected public self, our public mask and narrative that we use to navigate the day. For these revealing moments to happen, it's essential to create a special space. The physical location can play a part, but it's more about making a space where somebody can feel heard and safe so they are comfortable talking about things that take them out of their day- to-day rituals. Creating that feeling of safety is always on me - I don't expect anyone else to do that. It’s my job to read the room and create an environment where I think that person is going to feel at home. And that can be sometimes with a dirty joke, sometimes with an observation of something that they're wearing, or that they've said, or that they've done. Sometimes it's with lights, sometimes it's with music, sometimes with questions - but it's up to me to create it somehow. Without that trusting space, the result is just a mugshot.

As an immigrant, I learned from a young age how to read a room. Being born in a different country and growing up here forces you into kind of a survival mode where you want people to accept you and to like you and to not be mean to you. You understand that you've got to mold yourself to fit into different situations. And if that happens in your formative years, it becomes your modus operandi for life - you don't just turn it off. And while people who grow up where they were born have a different set of challenges than I did, this was imprinted in my DNA – that kind of molding to fit the space that you’re in and learning and taking from it the most you can. I also try to give as much as I can. To me, this give-and-take is key to building the collaborative energy that creates memorable moments between and among people.

I am grateful for the moments I have had with people here in Smithville and for all who were willing to take the risk of being photographed. With this show, I hope to give viewers an opportunity to get outside of their comfort zone, too, and look at themselves and their community in a new way. I want people to leave feeling enthusiastic about reconnecting with their city in a way that's somewhat different than how they've interacted with it in the past - maybe you are waving to new people that you didn't wave to before, maybe you are visiting other parts of town that you haven't been to in a long time or ever, maybe you are expanding your definition of your hometown a little bit, maybe you are making new friends with people that you never thought you would be friends with. These kinds of actions would define a successful project for me and make me happy that not only did I get to have special moments with all these folks, but they got to have special moments with each other.