Today we’d like to introduce you to Roj Rodriguez.
Hi Roj, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
When people ask me where I’m from and what’s my story, I like to start by telling them that although I’m originally from Texas, I was ‘made’ in New York City. New York City does something to your mind, heart and soul. Living and proving myself as a professional photographer in New York City for almost two decades, made me a better artist, friend, husband, and father. In 2016, my wife and I decided to move back to Texas and reestablish our family in Austin with our three incredible children, Diego, Aiden and Elisa.
Back in the early years when I stumbled into the world of photography, I found myself working here and there as a freelance photo assistant in the Houston area while attending the University of Houston working towards my Graphic Design degree. In the summer of 2000, I assisted a NYC based photographer for a photoshoot with Destiny’s Child for the cover of a Teen People magazine issue, which was my very first experience working with celebrities. The photographer I assisted appreciated my hard work and attention to detail. After the photoshoot, he invited me to reach out to him should I ever entertain “give New York City a try” to pursue photography as a career. I originally turned the invitation down, mainly because the New York City I thought I knew was what I had seen on TV or in the movies. I was afraid of getting mugged or shot the moment I got off the plane. Luckily, he reached out to me a month later with the same invitation and before I could give him my final answer, he told me that if I really wanted to pursue a career in photography, an invitation like this did not come by too often. What better place to learn the craft than the Mecca of photography – New York City. He did his best “sales pitch” , and I was sold. This was a great opportunity to train and learn from the best. I took that leap of faith and never looked back. For the next six years I had the amazing luck and opportunities to assist well-established photographers, travel the world, and work alongside many celebrated personalities. This opened up so many great opportunities for me that I never could have imagined.
By January 2006, I found myself at a juncture and realized that if I wanted to really become my own photographer, I needed to start to work on developing my career independently. I was extremely grateful for the opportunities afforded to me as an assistant that allowed me to learn the craft from established photographers. I knew I had to concentrate in building my portfolio, my style, work on developing new working relationships with other fellow artists, and work expand my new client roster. The biggest challenge was to balance the commercial and artistic sides of my work, and – at that time – becoming a father and dedicating time for that as well. It was the start of many new things in my life, both personally and professionally.
One of the first photo projects I had embarked on to build my new portfolio was a collection of portraiture I did in México. I traveled to México to revisit some of the places I used to visit with my parents during summer vacations, visiting family. What was supposed to be a one time trip to México wound up becoming regular visits for the next 11 years. I would like to tell myself that I helped keep AeroMéxico from going bankrupt! Slowly, something inside of me began to wake up. I wanted to know more about my cultural origins.
These images became the series Mi Sangre, which translates to My Blood. I wanted to rediscover the link to my Mexican heritage. Through my travels all across the beautiful country, I documented everyday aspects of Mexican life. The culture both as they exist in México and as they have been incorporated into everyday life in the US by Mexican Americans. The series highlights the diversity of expressions of “mexicanidad” across various age groups. It explored childhood memories of family trips to México to visit relatives and friends. The imagery also re-interprets some of the symbols associated with being Méxicano through images inspired by the music, the religious iconography and the cultural construction of mexicanidad. The subjects of this series included elegant and proud charros, beautiful and skilled escaramuzas, coy and joyful children, wise elders, vibrant and talented mariachi musicians, loving and welcoming families. With every single individual I had the honor to photograph, I engaged in sometimes casual, sometimes insightful conversations. I wanted to get to know them intimately so I could capture their light, their heart and their character justly.
Select images from that body of work are now part of the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts of Houston – my old hometown, the San Antonio Museum of Art, La Plaza De Cultura y Artes in Los Angeles – an affiliate of the Smithsonian Museum, The National Museum of Mexican American Art in Chicago, The Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, and the highly revered Wittliff Collections in San Marcos, TX.
In 2020, now back in Texas, as the world retreated into quarantine, and commercial gigs all but disappeared, I devoted myself to revisit the Mi Sangre series. I immersed myself in the full collection – close to 35,000 images, and curated selected images into a photography book that was published in December 2023 by Hatje Cantz, a publishing house based in Berlin since 1945. The book also includes essay contributions by people I admire deeply, like Dolores Huerta, Henry Cisneros, Doug Menuez and art curator Anne Wilkes Tucker, and it is peppered with lyrics from the music of the talented Lila Downs. This is also the first book in the world to have its own soundtrack with the help of Spotify and in 2024 it received the CommArts Award of Excellence. Not bad for a Mexican kid from the barrio.
For people who, like me, long for their childhood memories and become curious about their origin stories, the images in the Mi Sangre series have many layers of meanings. They reflect the religious symbols of Christianity colored by Indigenous devotion. They evoke the lotería game reminiscent of family gatherings and primos playing. They bring to mind the long drives in my father’s old, but sturdy blue station wagon from Houston to Matamoros and Guanajuato – with ranchera music playing on the static-ridden stereo. To this day, every time I hear static on the radio, I find myself in the back of the station wagon alongside my siblings. Yes, we rode in the back the entire trip – to and from. The imagery recreates the large extended family and a time when consumerism wasn’t a way of life, the word “vanity” was just a piece of furniture, and there was always room for one more at the dinner table. Barbacoa tacos, anyone?
In retrospect, getting the opportunity to move to New York proved itself to be a true blessing in disguise. It provided the distance necessary to examine the missing relationship to my heritage. In New York – while exposed to its ethnic, cultural and socioeconomic diversity and its unique view on immigrants – I found a renewed respect not only for my culture, but for others as well. This experience helped me develop a new paradigm for understanding the way immigrants are viewed – But aren’t we all immigrants?
I bring that sense of curiosity and questioning to all the projects I take on – commercial assignments, fine art, and personal alike.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
HA! To say that it was a smooth ride would do my story and those that helped me along the way a massive disservice. During my time as an assistant photographer, I quickly realized that in order for me to survive and thrive in New York City, I had to work and hustle that much harder than the photo assistants that were already there in the photography scene. Thankfully, my tenacity paid off and not before long, my name was getting passed around to various photo studios and photo agencies across New York City. That is how I found myself assisting many established photographers in the advertising, commercial, editorial, and fashion industry. There I was, still seeing myself as that kid from Texas who barely left his neighborhood to all of a sudden traveling the world, working in some of the most exotic places you can imagine and getting to work alongside many top tier celebrities. The journey has had many of those “pinch me” moments. That – in and of itself – was becoming a tightrope balancing act. Yes, it was great to have so much work and insane travel, I quickly began to notice that it was beginning to come at a price.
Launching my career as an independent photographer has brought other types of challenges. Establishing my name, fighting to get doors open, and fighting for parity in compensation among them. Things changed quite a bit. At the beginning, it meant taking a couple of steps back in terms of the kinds of projects I was working on. Early on, I did not have a mentor opening doors for me, so it was hard for clients to see me as “the photographer” after years of seeing me as “the first assistant”. What did not change was my hunger for excellence and my work ethic. Whether a client was a nonprofit (which sometimes meant donating most of my time), or doing headshots for a media company – all to simply get my foot in the door. All in all, I had demonstrated that I could deliver on a full campaign to which I brought my A game. Then there was changes in technology in the field, as well as formats. I quickly realized that if I wanted to look more appealing to new clients, I had to teach myself how to take my knowledge in photography to teaching myself the ins & outs of shooting video as clients had begun to require both stills and video footage for short films projects.
These days, I focus on stories that matter to me first – the invisibility of immigrants contributions documented in the 2024 series titled Nuestro Mississippi done in collaboration with the Mississippi Humanities Council, or the life and times of a respected Chicano leader in a documentary project I am launching about Gilberto Cardenas’ work, the world’s number one collector of Latina/o/x art. I’m also very fortunate to get to choose who to work with, like my recent partnership with A3 (formerly Arts Alliance Austin) as they revive the former Texas Fine Arts Association into an institution serving the current art ecosystem in Austin..
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
My focus is primarily on portraiture and on telling visual stories in a genuine way. While most of my professional works includes editorial, commercial and advertising assignments, I truly enjoy telling stories and I prefer to shoot on location, rather than in studios. For example, for the Nuestro Mississippi project I focused on unveiling the beauty and essence of immigrant leaders in that state. The project took on the form of road trips statewide getting to know the people I photographed – business and community leaders, scholars, artists, teachers. Sometimes our conversations would take an hour or two, and I used the opportunity to document those conversations in audio and film in preparation for taking their portrait. In short, I truly admire when people are devoted to their craft, whether they’re a celebrated athlete, a community organizer or a local hero. I am always honored when people allow me to portray their true, authentic selves in my images.
We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
Success goes hand in hand with taking risks – full stop. One of those pivotal moments was when I was invited to give New York City a try. Making the decision to move to Manhattan was literally a world away from everything familiar to me. I mean, how often does one get that chance to move to one of the largest cities of the world and not know a single soul in it.
Another big risk was when I decided to hang up my hat as the assistant photographer. As grateful as I was for the opportunity to work with celebrated photographers such as Mark Seliger, Terry Richardson, Michael Mueller, Annie Leibovitz, Ruven Afanador, Matthias Clamer, Brigitte Lacombe, and many other photographers, I chose to take that leap of faith once again to go out on my own and leave those awesome regular paychecks at a time when I was recently married and welcomed our first child. Finding those gigs as a photographer was all on me. No pressure, right?
Finally, the decision of moving the family from New York City back to Texas was yet another massive risk, because it meant getting established in Austin – effectively starting from scratch once more. Our decision to move to Texas was to be closer to our aging parents since visiting the grandkids in Manhattan was proving to be harder and trickier each time they came to visit. But moving to Austin proved to be a huge step forward in my career. It has been ten years since that move, and I am proud to say that I’m better off for it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.rojrodriguez.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/roj_rodriguez/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roj-rodriguez-5287675/
- Other: https://misangrebook.com
