Sergio Santos Introduction

b. 1977 Chicago, Illinois

 

Although Sergio Santos began his formal photographic education at the age of 18, he has been fascinated by photography since he was a child. He studied at the Glassell School of Art, but believes his most valuable photographic education comes from the mentorship and support he found at the Santa Fe Photography Workshops in New Mexico under instructors like Tony Corbell and Chip Simons.

In addition to his studies at Glassell and Santa Fe, Sergio received two Bachelor degrees—one in Literature and another in Philosophy—in 2000 from the University of St. Thomas. His Master of Arts in Literature was conferred from the University of Houston Clear Lake in 2006.

In his 13 years of professional photographic experience, Sergio has accepted grants from HAA (Houston Arts Alliance) and NALAC (National Association of Latino Arts and Culture) and has been featured in numerous exhibitions statewide.

The funds from the NALAC Individual Artist Award allowed Sergio to pursue a long awaited project with Casa Juan Diego. Casa Juan Diego is a sanctuary for immigrant refugees, predominantly from Latin America. Sergio's photographs of these men provided not only personalized faces to the often generalized and overlooked immigrant workers in the United States, but also allowed the men to send photographs back home to the families they had left behind.

In 2006 Sergio served as a featured artist and co-curator for the Fotofest exhibit, "Despejo." The images featured in the theme of "artists responding to violence" ranged from subtle and personal to overt and gory. Sergio's pieces included representative images of the tale he grew up hearing of his grandfather's untimely death in El Salvador when his mother was only a girl. Other featured photographs from that exhibit are meditations on the violence Sergio saw and felt in El Salvador as is evident in pieces such as a fenced off view of the beach, and a septuplet documenting his uncle's "special walk" devised to protect him from gang violence.

Sergio's first solo exhibition "Context" (2005), was a semiotic exploration via macro images of the decayed text of antique medicine bottles. The label instructions and descriptions. originally designed with their own purposes, appear distorted, gruesome and  sometimes even through Sergio's lens. Sergio continues to work on the series to this day, extending his exploration to more than just medicine bottles. He refers to the process of making the “Context” images as “cathartic.”

“Context” set the precedence for Sergio to create images in terms of projects. Since that time—Sergio immerses himself in his subject matter until the body of work that he originally envisions finally emerges. His 2006 series, “UnAmericana,” explored the terrain of a post-Katrina New Orleans and presented his audience with unexpected moments drawn from reality. Sergio’s more recent projects, however, (like “Transformed Permanence”) present vibrant world’s that emanate from his mind and consciousness.

Sergio's diverse education and personal experiences fuel his creative processes as they stimulate new artistic visions. While he finds inspiration in family and cultural traditions, he inevitably also finds inspiration in the verbal illustrations of literary masters such as William Faulkner and Nathanael West. Sergio's photographs reflect similar themes of the Modernist and Post-Modernist Literary movement. The tenets of the these movements—the isolation and collapse of the unified self, the destruction of assumed meaning, and the absurdity of life with other people—are all present in Sergio's work, albeit in a contemporary context.

Sergio is currently working on his series Visiones Mayas , which debuted in November of 2008 with the collaboration of the Consulate General of El Salvador. The series is inspired by the ancient Mayans and the Spanish Conquest. Sergio states that Visiones Mayas is the genesis of a much a larger vision.