Portraits-in-Place from the Sotavento: A Photo-Dialogue between Abraham Bosque and J.A. Strub

Abstract

Resulting from a series of conversations between its co-contributors, this photo-dialogue considers themes of nature-culture entanglements through the photographic work of Abraham Bosque, a documentary filmmaker and photojournalist who has lived in the Sotavento region of Mexico since 2017. Bosque’s work deals with the challenges implicit in portraying a tropical landscape whose vitality is the impetus for its extractivistic plunder. Through their conversations, Strub and Bosque consider eleven portraits-in-place that highlight, explore, and challenge ways of thinking about the relationships between humankind and nature, parochiality and globalization, tradition and modernity, beauty and violence, and the documentarian and their subject, all considered within the context of the Sotavento’s storied tropicality.