ARCANOS MAYORES

Arcanos mayores is an ongoing series of portraits of performatic characters that are not necessarily performers per se. Each of the Arcana offers a glimpse on their own experience of the interconnected tapestry that is Chile's underground scene.

Since 2017, I have been photographing figures I encounter within Chile’s underground and independent cultural scenes. These are individuals who fully merge what they do, how they look, and the spaces they inhabit. Their identities are not performative masks separated from everyday life, but integrated ways of existing.

Arcanos Mayores portrays these characters as autonomous cultural islands: an mushroom scholar, a acrobat, a performer, a writer, a dancer, a musician, a transvestite, a hat maker, an independent collector, a film maker, and an porn photographer - are outsiders who generate their own systems of exchange and visibility outside mainstream structures. Through clothing, light, gesture, and staging, I approach each portrait as the manifestation of an inner mythology already present within the subject.

The series draws from the idea of the Major Arcana in tarot, not as symbolic illustration, but as a framework to understand these individuals as carriers of transformation, contradiction, and collective desire. Together, the portraits form an archipelago of interconnected presences emerging from Chile’s fragmented cultural landscape.

For this specific project, I approached photography through strict formal conditions: a fixed angle, gradient studio lighting, and each character presented with an almost pedestal-like presence. At the same time, the images are highly constructed through composition, posing, art direction, costume, and make-up. I was interested in exploring photography beyond framing, angles, and lenses.