Latest / The MOOD Podcast / Feeling Like a Fraud Doesn’t Make You One, Says Photographer Emiliano Zúñiga Hernández

Transcript

Feeling Like a Fraud Doesn’t Make You One, Says Photographer Emiliano Zúñiga Hernández · The MOOD Podcast

• 0:00
  Emiliano: I definitely felt like a fraud.
• 0:01
  Emiliano: I felt like I was lying first to myself and then to others.
• 0:06
  Emiliano: But I think what helped me the most was photography.
• 0:11
  Matt: Meet Emiliano Zuniga Hernandez.
• 0:14
  Matt: He's a Costa Rican photographer who spent years helping other people heal and then made Paraiso, a book born out of his own depression.
• 0:22
  Emiliano: Lathers are for going up, that's what they're made for.
• 0:25
  Emiliano: You say, like, wow, why you can't ascend.
• 0:29
  Emiliano: I remember feeling like I was the loneliest person in the world.
• 0:33
  Matt: In this episode, we talk about what it really costs when something you built with love dissolved, and how photography can give purpose back.
• 0:41
  Matt: You'll hear how a barefoot stranger on the side of the road led him into shadow work, how Paraiso was made, and the stories behind its pictures.
• 0:51
  Matt: We also ask whether you need to suffer to make meaningful work, and what daily practice brings you back to yourself.
• 0:59
  Emiliano: Depression is anger inwards.
• 1:01
  Emiliano: You stop being angry with the outside world and you start seeing yourself as the problem.
• 1:07
  Emiliano: I felt a lot of guilt around the fact that I was depressed close to a person that because she loved me so much, she was affected by it.
• 1:16
  Emiliano: I remember the fear of entering that room to take that picture.
• 1:20
  Emiliano: And I think when I remember that fear, that's when I cried.
• 1:24
  Emiliano: Because I felt, wow, how is it possible that you feel fear in your own house?
• 1:29
  Emiliano: But in my case, it was like I took for granted something that was very, very precious.
• 1:35
  Emiliano: I saw how it was lost because I didn't took care of it.
• 1:38
  Emiliano: You need to get inside the fire, you know, and let it burn for a while.
• 1:43
  Emiliano: It hurt, but I'm grateful it happened.
• 1:45
  Emiliano: All I wanted back then was to actually be heard, but I didn't know what to say.
• 1:50
  Emiliano: And then suddenly I had this book to say.
• 1:52
  Emiliano: Thank you.
• 2:37
  Emiliano: And I wish I can say something that's valuable.
• 2:41
  Emiliano: So yeah, I'm excited.
• 2:43
  Matt: Well, for those watching or listening, uh, we had Emiliano on our on our community as a special guest uh just a few days ago.
• 2:51
  Matt: So um no doubt you'll have some uh fascinating insights and some really good uh uh value uh conversational bits to take away for us.
• 3:01
  Matt: But um to kick things off, uh I thought I would replicate a question that you asked yourself a long time ago, and we can see see where that goes.
• 3:10
  Matt: And that question was, and you can answer this kind of in present day, or you can answer it historically.
• 3:16
  Matt: The question you wrote yourself to yourself was what would your life look like if there were no obstacles?
• 3:24
  Emiliano: Wow.
• 3:25
  Emiliano: Um yeah, I was starting the process that Don, the guy in the book, the guy with the beard and and long hair, he wrote, and it started with those with that question.
• 3:39
  Emiliano: It actually started with what are your earliest memories?
• 3:43
  Emiliano: And then the second question was how would your life be?
• 3:48
  Emiliano: There were no obstacles.
• 3:49
  Emiliano: And in that time, I wrote something as I would live in the mountain, and I would help people like with some therapeutic work.
• 4:03
  Emiliano: At the time I didn't know well what shadow work was, and I did know photography, but I saw photography as something that was not necessarily linked with healing.
• 4:15
  Emiliano: Um the interesting thing about what I wrote is that pretty much everything that I wrote, it came it came true in in an in a different version than what I imagined, but I ended up living in the mountain, I ended up um helping or at least being involved with people's processes while they were healing or introspecting or questioning where they were coming from emotionally, psychologically, uh ideologically, etc.
• 4:50
  Emiliano: Uh but then photography became this amazing tool because I was living slightly isolated, you know, like we were living in the mountains, so uh part of what I loved it was like living living the life of what I thought it was the life of a poet.
• 5:12
  Emiliano: You know, like just going to the backyard and looking at the hill and writing stuff or taking pictures or doing videos and then editing them.
• 5:22
  Emiliano: Um and at some point I started to share those images.
• 5:27
  Emiliano: Uh I actually resisted for a long time social media.
• 5:31
  Emiliano: Uh not not because I had anything against it, but I was just not interested.
• 5:36
  Emiliano: I was I was a beginner in it, and I always felt like a little bit overwhelmed with, you know, like knowing that there was like dozens or hundreds of people out there like looking at you or looking at stuff that you shared.
• 5:51
  Emiliano: So I resisted that maybe out of shyness, but then it became like a very nice way to just share what I thought it was like poetry, but that poetry was mostly images, text.
• 6:04
  Emiliano: Uh I even I even did a magazine online, like, and it was posted on stories.
• 6:11
  Emiliano: Yeah.
• 6:12
  Emiliano: It was called The Magazine.
• 6:14
  Emiliano: And I always put it was like Mondays or something, and I I posted a like a cover picture and then like a little essay with a poem inside, and then some art that I found during the week that it was like that I wanted to share.
• 6:31
  Emiliano: And I did that.
• 6:32
  Emiliano: I I I was in that time there were reactions were not as evolved as today, so people were not really commenting or anything.
• 6:43
  Emiliano: But I thought there was people out there looking at it, and I don't know if there was people out there looking at it, but that was a way for me to actually feel like like I had something to share and that I re actually love sharing, and I I saw a use, um, I saw a purpose in sharing.
• 7:02
  Emiliano: Um if you ask me today what my life would be without obstacles, that's interesting because I I'm already teaching, which is something I love.
• 7:14
  Emiliano: I love teaching.
• 7:15
  Emiliano: Uh if you ask me like where would I where would I take teaching, I would say I would take teaching to an international level.
• 7:25
  Emiliano: I would love like teaching more, teaching more outside, and I would I would love teaching more things or teaching my own method, uh teaching my own workshops and just living a life where I could just like plan some uh I don't know three, four teachings or three, four workshops in a year and and go out and just like I don't know, like the other day in the in the presentation we did, I just remembered, you know, like there's people I I would never know if I wasn't in a platform of being exposed publicly, you know, like and someone actually pointing at me and saying, like, hey, you have something to say, can you actually say it out loud?
• 8:16
  Emiliano: Is what actually what you did.
• 8:18
  Emiliano: Yeah.
• 8:19
  Emiliano: So I think that would be something great that I would do if if I just if I was able to just choose and move as I wanted.
• 8:30
  Emiliano: Um But yeah, it would be linked with teaching.
• 8:34
  Emiliano: I think I would definitely shoot, I I can't stop shooting pictures.
• 8:39
  Emiliano: I think that's something I will always do.
• 8:41
  Emiliano: Um it is a thing that I do even when I'm not even thinking, you know, is I I probably shoot a picture at least one per day without not necessarily thinking about it.
• 8:53
  Emiliano: I I think it's just I am used to react uh to to image and accumulate images and then try to accommodate them in a way that makes sense for me or that I feel like I'm writing something.
• 9:10
  Emiliano: Yeah, I I would love that.
• 9:12
  Emiliano: And if there were no obstacles, I would take the dogs with me.
• 9:16
  Emiliano: Have two dogs, and I I would love them, you know, I would love to bring them everywhere and um yeah, I think I have not think it through, but it would be linked with teaching for sure.
• 9:35
  Matt: How did this all come about for you?
• 9:38
  Matt: Because you mentioned uh early on in your answer, you you mentioned Don um and you mentioned the book Paraiso.
• 9:44
  Matt: How did you come about this um philosophy around healing?
• 9:53
  Matt: W how did you realize that you maybe needed healing yourself?
• 9:57
  Matt: And how did you bump into this guy called Don, who features in the book and was your mentor for so long and helped you run your healing center?
• 10:06
  Matt: Tell tell us kind of that Genesis story of how this all began for you.
• 10:12
  Emiliano: Uh it all began for me with a heartbreak.
• 10:16
  Emiliano: And I was like 21.
• 10:18
  Emiliano: It was like my first girlfriend, and at that age I didn't know that relationships ended.
• 10:24
  Emiliano: That was surprising for me.
• 10:26
  Emiliano: I thought they were forever.
• 10:28
  Emiliano: And so I was so used to uh the idea that things didn't just collapse, or at least they didn't collapse abruptly.
• 10:39
  Emiliano: But then it happened, and I I was I think that was one of the first strong wake-up calls in my life.
• 10:48
  Emiliano: And when I what I mean with wake-up call is like when things just collapse and you are confronted with your own beliefs and your own way of seeing.
• 10:58
  Emiliano: Because I was 21, it was huge.
• 11:01
  Emiliano: You know, it was huge for me to deal with impermanence, to deal with to deal with loss, and to deal with the fact that I wasn't necessarily uh that I needed to grow a lot.
• 11:15
  Emiliano: And what happened then is like my mother was also going through something back then, and it it kind of like synced.
• 11:25
  Emiliano: Like she was going through something pretty strong, and then I I started going through something that it was less strong than hers, but it was my first time, so it was pretty strong for both.
• 11:36
  Emiliano: And then she was walking, one day she was walking, I don't know, a Saturday, she was just like walking in a park, and she saw a poster on the street that it was like meditation, uh dream interpretation, something very mystical.
• 11:56
  Emiliano: And she brought it home and she asked me, like, I I found it, I found this uh while walking.
• 12:04
  Emiliano: Do you think you will be interested in going with me?
• 12:07
  Emiliano: And I don't know why.
• 12:09
  Emiliano: I really don't know why I said yes.
• 12:11
  Emiliano: I I never had any experience with any of that.
• 12:15
  Emiliano: But I felt I feel like um so I will talk here about the bigger self and the small self.
• 12:20
  Emiliano: I think the bigger self always knows, and the small self is kind of like it starts to understand later what the bigger self already knows.
• 12:29
  Emiliano: So I think saying yes came from the bigger self, and it was an inner calling that was ready.
• 12:37
  Emiliano: I think I think we all maybe all of us face like this almost mathematical points in our lives where things just change and they start changing and they stay changing.
• 12:50
  Emiliano: Um and for me, I remember going to that first session of this center, and something as simple as they say, like, ask yourself, who am I, what am I doing, and where am I?
• 13:09
  Emiliano: Like a couple of times a day.
• 13:12
  Emiliano: Um the purpose of it was being mindful of yourself, but I think maybe because I was vulnerable, it just entered, it just really entered to the place where it needed to enter, and I I remember feeling that it was the first time ever that I actually realized that I was alive, and that being alive was not only thinking that you're alive, but actually feeling it.
• 13:40
  Emiliano: And I remember that for me, the sensation of feeling being alive, it was like it just changed the whole paradigm for me.
• 13:51
  Emiliano: And I became really almost obsessed with it, and I started doing those three questions.
• 13:58
  Emiliano: Like they they suggested you do it like five times a day.
• 14:01
  Emiliano: I was doing it like 25 times a day.
• 14:04
  Emiliano: And I was doing it in the bus while going to the to the city and taking a walk, and then I was doing it while walking.
• 14:11
  Emiliano: Remind me of the questions.
• 14:13
  Emiliano: Who am I?
• 14:14
  Emiliano: Who am I, what am I doing, and where am I?
• 14:18
  Emiliano: And the purpose was trying to answer those questions not with thoughts, but kind of like with feeling it.
• 14:29
  Emiliano: So if I asked myself who am I, it would be misleading to say I am Emiliano.
• 14:36
  Emiliano: You know, that's that was just very, very easy.
• 14:40
  Emiliano: So the purpose of it was like um actually trying to feel who you are, or trying to feel yourself being.
• 14:48
  Matt: Can you answer those questions for us?
• 14:50
  Matt: Can you answer those questions for us now?
• 14:53
  Emiliano: Uh well, if I did, I would need to stay silent because I I don't think there is any um when I answer those questions properly, I actually stopped.
• 15:04
  Emiliano: I tried to stop the narrative that just automatically uh starts when I wake up and let's say ends or rests when I go to rest.
• 15:18
  Emiliano: When I do the when I do those three questions, I try to actually feel myself alive and I because I do it every day, it's kind of like training a muscle.
• 15:30
  Emiliano: And so for me, that muscle train looks like just being very silent and just being very aware of the sensation of being.
• 15:41
  Emiliano: Uh, if I answer those questions in if I translate those answers to to language, I would say I am the one who is looking at this.
• 15:53
  Emiliano: I am the one who uh I am the one who witnesses, I am the one, uh I am the goal, and at the same time I I am the one seeking.
• 16:05
  Matt: Um So do you feel there is a a a self at the center of of experience and consciousness, or are you in uh kind of that non-dual belief where there is no subject and object?
• 16:21
  Emiliano: I think there is something.
• 16:23
  Emiliano: Uh I I w in a in a in a workshop I did with Don one time there was uh an attendee, and she said it's like uh it's like nothing but it's full.
• 16:35
  Emiliano: And that was great for me.
• 16:38
  Emiliano: I I I felt like yeah, that's very accurate.
• 16:40
  Emiliano: There's really nothing there, but it's full of it's filled with it's a nothingness that it's filled, or or it's a wholeness that is filled with nothing.
• 16:51
  Emiliano: I don't know.
• 16:52
  Emiliano: Uh but I do think there is like this perfect state in the center of all of us, and it's always waiting for us, and it's always knocking the door.
• 17:03
  Emiliano: And I think when we don't listen to it, we actually become sick or um become depressed or become, you know, like very distracted with stuff that uh are very real for us at the moment, but I think there is so I think it's very different to be depressed and not knowing that there is something inside of you that is perfect and that it's waiting for you.
• 17:27
  Emiliano: I think actually what I dealt with when I when I was shooting Paraíso or when I when the initiative dissolved, I guess it's something that we will touch later.
• 17:38
  Emiliano: But when I was dealing with depression, I I think I was still shooting photography because I knew there was a part of me that it was always aware of beauty and that it was guiding me back out of it through beauty.
• 17:56
  Emiliano: And and I I I would say that Paraíso was shot by that by that energy, you know, like by that energy that knows that there it knows that there will be a day where when you will look back and realize like, oh wow, I'm it hurt, but I'm grateful it happened.
• 18:19
  Emiliano: You know, I think there is a part of us that always knows that we will actually look back at the bad days and actually say, like, those were amazing uh growth-oriented days.
• 18:31
  Matt: Yeah.
• 18:33
  Matt: So that this introduction to meditation, mindfulness, um whatever you label kind of you want to put on it at the time with your mum and with your mother um going through what she was going through.
• 18:45
  Matt: How did this was by the sounds of it, an introduction into shadow work, and then you you moved on from there.
• 18:53
  Matt: Is that correct?
• 18:53
  Matt: And then and then where did Don come into this and the healing center?
• 19:00
  Emiliano: Okay, it's actually connected by a very, you know, by what we call an accident, which is not an accident because it's very it was perfect.
• 19:09
  Emiliano: It was just perfect in the timeline.
• 19:10
  Emiliano: So I was taking a trip, a field trip with the community of people of this center.
• 19:16
  Emiliano: Then the the activity ended.
• 19:20
  Emiliano: It was at the beach.
• 19:22
  Emiliano: And I remember that I I was driving all the trip, I did it with uh with a friend.
• 19:28
  Emiliano: He was he was like in the co-pilot seat.
• 19:33
  Emiliano: And for some reason, since the trip started, he was asking me, like, hey, let's let's let's bring that guy uh let's stop for that guy.
• 19:43
  Emiliano: So let's give a let's give a ride to that guy.
• 19:46
  Emiliano: I never stopped.
• 19:47
  Emiliano: But I was already kind of like uh looking for what was the next person that I actually could stop the car and give them a ride.
• 19:59
  Emiliano: Uh so when the trip ended at the beach, we needed to go to we need to connect to another area of the country, and it's like an inner road that connects the beach with the hills.
• 20:12
  Emiliano: And in that drive to the hills, there was Don, and he was at just at the side of the road, and he was barefoot.
• 20:23
  Emiliano: Um he was wearing, I don't know, like some button shirt, and he had this amazing beard and amazing hair, so he was really interesting looking.
• 20:34
  Emiliano: I guess if I wasn't interested in photography, I wouldn't know that he was interesting looking, but because I was interested in image, I know that he was interesting by how he looked.
• 20:47
  Emiliano: Uh for any reason.
• 20:49
  Emiliano: I don't know if he was an interesting person or no, but his appearance was was interesting to look at.
• 20:54
  Emiliano: And so I actually stopped the car there, and he came and he said, like, uh, I'm going to San Isidro, which is like the main town around the area.
• 21:04
  Emiliano: And he said, Yeah, come in.
• 21:06
  Emiliano: Um so he sat in the back seat of the car, and in the dash of the car, there was a book, a copy of this book, Be Here Now.
• 21:18
  Emiliano: Uh it's a very famous book by Ramdas and Timothy Leary and Fantastic.
• 21:24
  Emiliano: Uh I actually didn't read it, so that's even more fun because that car that book was there just by chance because my friend had it there.
• 21:33
  Emiliano: And the dash, because it was in the dash, so the book was reflecting in the window of the car, in the front window of the car.
• 21:43
  Emiliano: And he saw the reflection and he said, Be here now.
• 21:47
  Emiliano: Uh that sounds interesting.
• 21:50
  Emiliano: Uh he probably was hooked by it because, of course, that was his whole thing.
• 21:56
  Emiliano: And just by seeing that, he realized like, well.
• 21:59
  Emiliano: I got it, I got here for a reason.
• 22:02
  Emiliano: And we got him here for a reason, also.
• 22:05
  Emiliano: And so we started talking, and he was asking, like, well, what are you guys doing here?
• 22:10
  Emiliano: And I told him, like, uh, we were in this activity of the center that is linked with meditation and um confronting the ego and checking your beliefs, and he said, Huh, that's interesting.
• 22:23
  Emiliano: And I say, Yeah, I like learning about that stuff.
• 22:26
  Emiliano: And that's when he said, Uh, I wonder if it's better to unlearn.
• 22:31
  Emiliano: And for me, that I don't know.
• 22:33
  Emiliano: That that just really touched a nerve.
• 22:37
  Emiliano: And I felt I felt like he was saying something that I was I was interested in, but I didn't know why.
• 22:45
  Emiliano: Uh so we actually got him to where he needed to be, and we took a coffee, and he just started talking about a lot of stuff, and everything he said just resonated.
• 22:55
  Emiliano: And then he said, I I I teach a workshop that's called Shadow Facilitation Workshop.
• 23:01
  Emiliano: And it's for free, it's donation-based, and and I don't know, like one week after that I was there.
• 23:10
  Emiliano: I was in the workshop, and it was me and just another guy.
• 23:16
  Emiliano: And I mean, the workshop happened with two persons, two attendees.
• 23:21
  Emiliano: And in that workshop, it there was a lot of exercise that it was like he said, like, for 15 minutes, you need to say, I am Llanc, and you need to you need to fill the blank for 15 minutes and don't stop, just look at the other person.
• 23:37
  Emiliano: And so I say, like, I am Emiliano, I am a photographer, I am Costa Rican, and I just kept going for like 15 minutes, and at some point you just you you're you're just lost.
• 23:48
  Emiliano: You don't know what else to say, but you're still there.
• 23:52
  Emiliano: And so the purpose of the exercise is that you still exist even if you don't know who you who you are, even if you don't have any more ways of describing yourself, you the essence of what you are, it's it's still there, and it's still seeking if you want it to seek.
• 24:09
  Emiliano: Um and that was my whole introduction to shadow work.
• 24:15
  Emiliano: Um at the end of the workshop, he did he taught an exercise that it was he was asking where do you carry?
• 24:22
  Emiliano: Uh I was talking about my when I was when I was a kid, I I had this thing called selective mutism, which is that I I didn't speak.
• 24:32
  Emiliano: Uh I couldn't speak for to a lot of people.
• 24:36
  Emiliano: I only spoke in like my core family.
• 24:39
  Emiliano: And I I stayed like three years without talking to anyone outside of the core family.
• 24:44
  Emiliano: And uh so he brought me to that area of my life, and he was he was saying, like, where do you carry the shyness and where do you carry and he would say, Can you elaborate on shyness?
• 24:56
  Emiliano: And I said, It feels cold.
• 24:58
  Emiliano: And he said, Does it feel this cold?
• 25:01
  Emiliano: And he put ice in my neck because I chose the neck as the place.
• 25:05
  Emiliano: And I say, Yeah, it feels that way.
• 25:07
  Emiliano: And so he taped it with masking tape.
• 25:11
  Emiliano: And it stayed there, and it was uncomfortable, of course.
• 25:14
  Emiliano: He put something between my skin and the cold, so it didn't hurt me.
• 25:18
  Emiliano: And then he said, Were you will Were you this stall when you were five years old?
• 25:23
  Emiliano: And I say, No.
• 25:24
  Emiliano: And he said, Can you be five years old?
• 25:26
  Emiliano: And so I put myself on my knees, and I was looking at the world from that angle, and it became very real.
• 25:32
  Emiliano: Everything became very real again by exposure therapy, I guess.
• 25:37
  Emiliano: Yeah.
• 25:38
  Emiliano: And at the end of the session, I needed to do something to break that sensation of coldness and the sensation of shyness.
• 25:47
  Emiliano: So what I chose to do it was like yelling as loud as I could.
• 25:53
  Emiliano: Um no words, just yelling.
• 25:57
  Emiliano: And I remember experiencing there, like, I don't know, like becoming like this animal that it was just yelling and reclaiming power in a way.
• 26:06
  Emiliano: And after the workshop, I just felt like I just crossed a threshold into the unknown.
• 26:13
  Emiliano: I I didn't know what happened, but it was really amazing and really healthy.
• 26:18
  Emiliano: You know, I was fully aware.
• 26:20
  Emiliano: And Dawn and the initiative uh we ended up developing, we were not against, but we were choosing not to use any substances.
• 26:30
  Emiliano: Uh so everything was about really living with only what you needed, and not necessarily like altering.
• 26:41
  Emiliano: And not bec again, not because I am against any of that, but it was just a method.
• 26:48
  Emiliano: And so it was really about being with yourself and being with your naked self and discovering a lot uh through that angle, I guess.
• 26:59
  Matt: So this then you set up this healing center with Don.
• 27:04
  Matt: Tell us about that journey, how long it went for, and and eventually the dissolution of it, uh, and then we'll we can kind of feed that into the book Paraiso.
• 27:14
  Matt: Quick one from me before we carry on.
• 27:18
  Matt: Now, most photographers I know do all of this completely alone, right?
• 27:22
  Matt: They think alone, ideate alone, they shoot alone, they edit alone, and they sit with questions about their work, about their process, about their brand, and they have really nowhere to take them.
• 27:35
  Matt: I know this because I did that for so many years.
• 27:39
  Matt: So I decided to build the room I always wanted to be in, and it's called The Mood Insiders.
• 27:45
  Matt: It's a private community for photographers just like us who want to go deeper than the scrolling feed or just posting the images and hoping to get something back.
• 27:54
  Matt: We meet online three times a week and a few times a year in person.
• 27:58
  Matt: We go through books that are important for learning in our craft, and we study and review photo books.
• 28:04
  Matt: We look at each other's work through intentional and structured formal critiques, and every so often one of the artists from either the books or from the podcast comes and sits in with us.
• 28:15
  Matt: As well as that, all members have full access to my flagship video course, Voice Alchemy.
• 28:21
  Matt: They get access to master classes every six weeks, QA sessions, extra podcast features, posting platforms and platforms, and so much more.
• 28:30
  Matt: It's a community of people who care about the why behind the work, not just the output.
• 28:36
  Matt: The community and resources you need to take the next step in your photography, not just another posting app or a sharing algorithmic platform, but a community that goes so much deeper.
• 28:49
  Matt: So if that sounds like your kind of thing, the link is below in the description.
• 28:53
  Matt: Go and take a look and hope to see you inside.
• 28:56
  Matt: Right, back to the conversation.
• 29:00
  Emiliano: So, yeah, that there's there's actually a very important parenthesis there, which is uh I went to like three or four work workshops with Don.
• 29:11
  Emiliano: Then I left the country because I left I I finished university, I finished photography.
• 29:18
  Emiliano: Uh I actually I'm I graduated from photography.
• 29:22
  Emiliano: Um and then there was I was not really finding a job or anything interesting.
• 29:30
  Emiliano: And I applied in a website where I was like subscribed, there was an advertisement or would you like to volunteer?
• 29:41
  Emiliano: And there were like a couple of countries, and I say, Yeah, I would love that.
• 29:46
  Emiliano: And at the end, it was not necessarily volunteering, it was like living and working and helping a self-sustainable community to evolve or grow.
• 29:57
  Emiliano: And because of the time frame, I chose a time frame of six months and I left.
• 30:04
  Emiliano: I and I left to this country called Sandbins and the Grenadines.
• 30:08
  Emiliano: Yeah.
• 30:08
  Emiliano: And there I met Natsuku, which is the Japanese woman that appears in a lot of my work since I met her till the publishing of Paraiso and when she moved back to Japan, that it was like uh two years ago.
• 30:26
  Emiliano: Um but so I met Natsuku, and it was like an instant connection, and we became like best friends, and it was really hard to imagine just letting go of the connection.
• 30:40
  Emiliano: So I suggested that I can move to Japan.
• 30:44
  Emiliano: And it was not as it was not as easy, it was easier for her to come to Costa Rica because we were already in Latin America.
• 30:52
  Emiliano: And so we came to Costa Rica and we were doing like whatever to have something to work, so we were like cooking marmalades, and uh we even opened uh with another friend, we opened like this um thing about selling kefir.
• 31:10
  Emiliano: Um but then Don was still present, and by the time we moved back here to Costa Rica, uh he had written uh like a more official form for his process called the journey.
• 31:29
  Emiliano: And the journey were like these 40 focus meditations, and they were aim they aim to pretty much uh getting in touch with every possible angle of how we operate, like starting from what do we what do we believe about how what do we believe spiritually, what do we believe politically, what do we believe about our family, how we relate with them, how we relate with this, this, this, and this.
• 31:59
  Emiliano: You know, it was like many um many angles to the what do you what do you avoid, what what are you addicted to, what do you resist, uh, what do you deny?
• 32:11
  Emiliano: And I always remember the exercise of denial.
• 32:15
  Emiliano: It says like access denial, it's very difficult for the ego mind.
• 32:21
  Emiliano: And he said, like, one one way to access it is like think about something that bugs you from another person, and think about the possibility that you may have that and they're reflecting it to you.
• 32:35
  Emiliano: Yeah.
• 32:35
  Emiliano: And and that was a way actually discovered, like, oh my god, yeah.
• 32:41
  Emiliano: Uh that's why this person really bugs me.
• 32:45
  Emiliano: He is really reflecting something about me that I don't want, I don't want to admit about myself.
• 32:50
  Emiliano: Yeah.
• 32:51
  Emiliano: So anyway, it was a very powerful process.
• 32:54
  Emiliano: And shadow work is like that.
• 32:56
  Emiliano: Shadow work is like a confrontate confrontational method, but Don was also this person filled with love, and so it was confronting yourself but with love.
• 33:08
  Emiliano: In a loving way.
• 33:09
  Emiliano: So it was perfect.
• 33:10
  Emiliano: It was perfect.
• 33:11
  Emiliano: And so Natsuko, Don, and me uh started talking about the possibility of creating a community based on shadow work and with some of the principles that we learned living abroad in this soul-sustainable community.
• 33:30
  Emiliano: And we didn't think much about it.
• 33:34
  Emiliano: We just we we just felt like this is just flowing so well that it will just work, and it did, it it really worked.
• 33:43
  Emiliano: Uh, we found a little house in the hills, um kind of like one hour north from the capital, and we found this perfect place to start, and we started receiving people from from around the world, and they stayed in exchange of doing the journey and donating or helping with groceries or whatever they could afford.
• 34:08
  Emiliano: And then they left and someone else came, and so at some point we we had I remember having like 11 persons in a in a house that it was like for three.
• 34:18
  Emiliano: And it was it was just like camping, um, but at the same time doing shadow work, it was great.
• 34:25
  Emiliano: Um the initiative grew a lot, and there was actually uh uh there's actually a point in the evolution of the initiative that I would call it the climax.
• 34:39
  Emiliano: Um it's when we moved further to the mountains and we were like uh in an area that it was around this beautiful pristine river.
• 34:50
  Emiliano: Um and we lived there for seven months.
• 34:54
  Emiliano: We were taking care of this retreat center.
• 34:57
  Emiliano: Uh, by the owner was attending something in Belgium, and so it was ours, or it was uh ours to take care of it for seven months, and there's where we we had the biggest flow.
• 35:12
  Emiliano: That that's not the place that I shot in the pictures.
• 35:16
  Emiliano: I shot a lot in that area, but um for some reason then the owner came back and it was not it was not possible to stay anymore.
• 35:26
  Emiliano: Um and after the climates it started to collapse little by little uh until we found the place that it's mostly uh in the book.
• 35:38
  Emiliano: Um and in that place we operated for like two years and it was still great, but with like a declining.
• 35:46
  Emiliano: And I think we were also I at that time I was like 28.
• 35:51
  Emiliano: Umatsuku was 29, and Don was like 65.
• 35:57
  Emiliano: So his needs and our needs started to contrast a bit.
• 36:06
  Emiliano: Yeah, for obvious reasons, you know.
• 36:08
  Emiliano: I was when I look back, I can I can definitely say, yeah, I was just too young for the life that I was aiming to, you know.
• 36:17
  Emiliano: It was just like we were living like this ascetic life.
• 36:21
  Emiliano: And at some point, you I I mean for me at least, talking about being you start wishing other stuff.
• 36:29
  Emiliano: Uh you start, I don't know, thinking about like, well, am I ready to really just have this common purse, for example, like where we all um just spend thinking about the communal thing?
• 36:44
  Emiliano: Or am I ready to have this core family and dedicate my life to only this?
• 36:50
  Emiliano: And the answer was like yes, but it was still like you know, it's some inner turmoil.
• 36:57
  Emiliano: And at some point we stopped having as much guests.
• 37:03
  Emiliano: Uh, financially, we were not really solvent, and it was time to dissolve it.
• 37:12
  Emiliano: Uh, we started to have some disagreements, and it just dissolved.
• 37:18
  Emiliano: Um and that was in 2019 or early 2020.
• 37:24
  Emiliano: And after that, I stayed living in that house with Natsuku and three dogs.
• 37:33
  Emiliano: Uh actually four dogs, and then our cat had four kitties.
• 37:40
  Emiliano: So we were just like surrounded by animals, which it was it was great, it was loving and it was lovely, but um yeah, and then after the dissolution of of everything, it something started to grow in me, and it was like a sense of failure, and a and a sense of a broken ideal and a sense of isolation.
• 38:06
  Emiliano: And I I I remember feeling like I was the loneliest person in the world.
• 38:10
  Emiliano: Yeah, I felt like there's no other 29-year-old man in this country going through the same.
• 38:18
  Emiliano: And I I don't think I was exaggerating.
• 38:21
  Emiliano: I I think that was one of the things that we decided when we built the initiative, it was like taking things really further.
• 38:29
  Emiliano: And I'm glad we did, but at the same time, you know, there was always that risk of of you know like having no really point of reference.
• 38:37
  Emiliano: And so I started to fall into depression, and I had accumulated a lot of pictures from the uh you know from the from the days where we were actually active.
• 38:52
  Emiliano: But I started shooting pictures of people actually feeling isolated and feeling alien, you know, to joy and to many things.
• 39:08
  Emiliano: And so a lot of what what it's in the book is actually the it's kind of like you know, it's kind of like a portrait of a fracture of a home, and also what was around me as being Natsuko and the animals.
• 39:30
  Emiliano: Like they were just carrying this energy that they were modeling a state of being that was not depressed and that was not prone to you know these levels of energy and anxiety, you know, and panic attacks and all that stuff.
• 39:50
  Emiliano: Um I think the curious thing about all this is that because I was a healer, I thought like, oh, I'm I'm just going through something big, you know, I maybe something transformative, but I didn't know that there was something as depression and panic attacks.
• 40:11
  Emiliano: And then when I started experiencing all of that, I realized like, okay, I think this has a name.
• 40:17
  Emiliano: And I think actually some of the people I helped in the past talked to me about this.
• 40:22
  Matt: And did you feel like a bit of a fraud is probably a strong word, but do you feel like as a healer at that time, and you uh, you know, putting a label on this as a healer, but you were helping people heal, and at the same time, or there was a some kind of crossover, obviously, uh after the dissolution, but at the same time as a healer, you were struggling to be healed yourself and you were going kind of the opposite direction.
• 40:52
  Matt: There has to be some real cognitive dissonance there where you're projecting this healing persona and helping others, but inside you're actually falling apart.
• 41:03
  Emiliano: Yeah, I I definitely felt like a fraud.
• 41:06
  Emiliano: That was one of the narratives that I needed to heal.
• 41:10
  Emiliano: That was like one of the main ones because I felt like I was lying first to myself and then to others.
• 41:18
  Emiliano: But I think uh after some time looking back, I I don't think I was necessarily lying because now that now what I can see is that what was helping the people that came to us, it was actually my innocence.
• 41:33
  Emiliano: I didn't know you know something as dark as that.
• 41:37
  Emiliano: So I was modeling a way of being that was fresh and that was um innocent, you know, innocent.
• 41:45
  Emiliano: I I I remember even looking different, you know, my my face looked different, I was it looked younger.
• 41:52
  Emiliano: Um and after depression, it was like actually it was like an an initiation process, you know, like actually really saying like okay, I I subscribe to this, I chose working on myself, and now the actual thing, you know, the the actual thing for this stage of my life is actually here, you know, and it it is this cave and it looks this dark.
• 42:20
  Emiliano: And I did found many things from what I accumulated in Shadow Work useful, but I think what helped me the most it was photography.
• 42:34
  Emiliano: Because um one of the things that I I I believe everyone would agree, everyone that has gone through depression would agree, is that um you feel like you lose purpose, and so I regain purpose through photography and through actually the building of a story and the story that I wanted to tell.
• 42:59
  Matt: Good.
• 43:00
  Matt: Well, that's uh I I I know that feeling too where you you wake up thinking, what's the point of any of this?
• 43:06
  Matt: And then so you did end up not waking up and uh staying in bed and not really uh you know, I say waking up in a metaphorical sense.
• 43:14
  Matt: Um, obviously, some people do go the darker route, but um this photography kind of saving you in a in a way, but at least giving you an outlet for that purpose and for that voice.
• 43:28
  Matt: And Paraisoaiso was that voice.
• 43:30
  Matt: So, you know, I have the book here.
• 43:33
  Matt: For those that are watching, you know, we're we're gonna overlay uh images as as we talk anyway.
• 43:38
  Matt: Um, but you know, let's start with um the the the concept of the book, I guess we've already stuck uh talked about in terms of the overall feeling of it and the purpose of it.
• 43:52
  Matt: But you know, maybe you can go into a little bit more detail by using this this cover image, this first image of of the ladder, and and give us an insight.
• 43:59
  Matt: An introduction to the the book itself and the f the photographs within it.
• 44:05
  Emiliano: Yeah.
• 44:06
  Emiliano: Well that lather was uh built by Don Natsuko and myself.
• 44:14
  Emiliano: Uh so that's a very symbolic already thing.
• 44:17
  Emiliano: You know, it was it was like a footprint, you know, like something in common that we shared, and you know, ladders are for going up.
• 44:28
  Emiliano: Um that's what they're made for.
• 44:31
  Emiliano: There's really no other purpose for them.
• 44:33
  Emiliano: Um they are meant to be used to go up.
• 44:38
  Emiliano: Um there was this event in the house one time where there was a window that broke.
• 44:45
  Emiliano: I think Don was painting his room and he fell down from a chair or something, and with his elbow he broke a window.
• 44:56
  Emiliano: And it was just it was not like a tragedy or anything, it was just like, yeah, a window was broken.
• 45:03
  Emiliano: And but then when he left, uh and Natsuku and I didn't so it was a big window, and we didn't really have the resources to repair it.
• 45:17
  Emiliano: So it was repaired with masking tape.
• 45:21
  Emiliano: And that was for me, that was also very important because masking tape was very used by us when we did psychodrama and we pasted the emotions in parts parts of the body.
• 45:31
  Emiliano: So masking tape was like this other symbol.
• 45:35
  Emiliano: Uh anyway, one time the the ladder stayed there in exactly the place where I took the picture of the cover.
• 45:43
  Emiliano: It stayed there for weeks or months.
• 45:46
  Emiliano: Um, I think it was used also by our cats, they just love going to the roof.
• 45:52
  Emiliano: Um and one time I was walking near that window and I realized that if I looked at the cracks, there was a very important refraction of images.
• 46:05
  Emiliano: Whatever was reflected was refracted, actually.
• 46:08
  Emiliano: And by that time I was exploring with Polaroid, because that's another thing.
• 46:15
  Emiliano: You know, photography actually helped me to be entertained, also.
• 46:18
  Emiliano: So I had these Polaroids, and I wanted to take this Polaroid of the of the ladder, and with exactly, you know, like being refracted in a place where you where it actually becomes useful.
• 46:34
  Emiliano: Useless, actually.
• 46:36
  Emiliano: It becomes useless because the ladder cannot be used anymore.
• 46:40
  Emiliano: You know, it's not works for nothing.
• 46:43
  Emiliano: Um time passed, a lot of time passed, and when I when I brought that the prints to the Chico review, the Chico Portfolio review, uh, I had a review with Brad Seller, which is one that I really treasure.
• 46:59
  Emiliano: Can legend that guy.
• 47:02
  Emiliano: Yeah, yeah.
• 47:03
  Emiliano: He's such a sharp, such a sharp and fast mind.
• 47:09
  Emiliano: And that was the opening picture of my 20 pictures.
• 47:13
  Emiliano: And it was like a big print, and he saw it and he said, like, uh, wow, why why you can't ascend?
• 47:21
  Emiliano: And I didn't interpret that as a literal, you know, like going up the ladder.
• 47:29
  Emiliano: I I interpreted that from the vulnerability of feeling exactly as you say, like feeling like a fraud and feeling like a broken ideal, and feeling like I failed myself.
• 47:43
  Emiliano: And I I also had all these, you know, like in parallel to that, I I had all this uh accumulated Christian aesthetic and Christian way of understanding, Christian myths, I guess.
• 47:57
  Emiliano: Because I grew up in Latin America and that's very common, you know, that it happens a lot here.
• 48:03
  Emiliano: Um and so I had all this idea of ascension, you know, and uh looking for heaven, and you know, what it's above, it's you know, how it's above is below, but there I cannot go above because I cannot ascend.
• 48:20
  Emiliano: All those terms for me, they spoke to me.
• 48:23
  Emiliano: And so I realized that that was an image that really summarized pretty much everything in a very simple and domestic way, also, because what you're seeing is a ladder that was built in home.
• 48:39
  Emiliano: So it was domestic, profound, philosophical, spiritual, um, depressive, you know, it was everything in that image.
• 48:49
  Matt: Tell me more about the um the the Chico review.
• 48:55
  Matt: Um we'll get back to uh I guess a couple of a couple of these images that I do want to touch on, but I think uh giving us the story of kind of how this book came about initially and how it was recognized, I think will lead us into to some of these images which are uh more profound and a little bit more more poetic um based on what I already know about your your Chico experience.
• 49:19
  Matt: But if give us a give us that anecdote of of the Chico experience and how this was received by reviewers and then what happened post post-Chico.
• 49:29
  Matt: Because it was COVID time, so I know you had you had challenges with that itself.
• 49:33
  Emiliano: Actually, I I was going to the 2020, March 2020 version of the Chico review, which of course didn't happen because that's exactly when the pandemic started.
• 49:46
  Emiliano: Everything shut down, and that was already, you know, considering how I was, that was really hard for me.
• 49:54
  Emiliano: Uh because I needed to wait, which was the best thing that ever happened to me, because if I brought the version of March 2020 of my work, it was just really, you know, it was like a baby.
• 50:07
  Emiliano: It was the baby version of all of it.
• 50:10
  Emiliano: Um when it dissolved, when when the possibility of going in 2020 uh was not there anymore, uh I still one time I I uploaded the picture of Natsuko bringing cats down from the ladder, which is actually in the book, and Harrison Miller, um which you may know, but Harrison Miller is you know like the founder of uh Underlife Editions and currently uh a reviewer at Chico.
• 50:44
  Emiliano: He reposted that and I say, Hey, thanks, man.
• 50:48
  Emiliano: And that that was the beginning of an endless chat and a chat that then transferred to audios and calls and video calls, and just me saying and he actually looking a lot of what I was doing with Paraíso, and it was not even called Paraíso, it was called I think at that time the project was called Broken Continuity or something in Spanish, but something like that.
• 51:16
  Emiliano: And so it was a very literal thing, and I remember him saying, Oh, I I love this.
• 51:22
  Emiliano: Have you thought about this?
• 51:23
  Emiliano: And have he was really he was he was like you know, someone that fell from the sky.
• 51:29
  Emiliano: Um so we talked a lot, and then I agreed that I wanted to use the Chico review as an also as an excuse to just travel a little bit and do something that I always wanted to do.
• 51:50
  Emiliano: It was like a road trip, a long road trip.
• 51:53
  Emiliano: And so Harrison invited me to his place in Tennessee, and I landed there.
• 51:59
  Emiliano: He he picked me up at uh in Tennessee, and then he brought me home to his home, and I stayed with him I think like four days, and then we start we started the road trip, and it was a four-day road trip, and it was just endless conversations and philosophical uh you know ideas, just like it was great, it was like the best road trip possible.
• 52:24
  Emiliano: And actually, I he was going to publish Paraíso.
• 52:28
  Emiliano: He said, like, yeah, we can do like this small run.
• 52:32
  Emiliano: Uh I trusted whatever he said because I I knew I started to realize that his printing was amazing and he knew a lot more about photography and photo books because just as context, you know, in Costa Rica that's a very, very specific and almost non-existent thing.
• 52:52
  Emiliano: You know, photo books here are just like you know, most of the people don't even know that exists.
• 52:59
  Emiliano: Um so I trusted him and and I was going to publish, but I so I say I I remember talking in the car and saying, like, well, I don't care how it goes in the in the review because anyway I will publish with you, and he said, Yeah, so yeah, this could be fun.
• 53:18
  Emiliano: Like let's just have fun in the review, and anyway, everything changed as as we entered the doors at that hotel in Montana.
• 53:30
  Emiliano: And I felt like, oh wow, this is huge! You know, there is like 80 persons here, it's it's it's insane.
• 53:37
  Emiliano: There's just a lot of people.
• 53:39
  Emiliano: Um Harrison and I got drunk that night at the bar there, and then we went to sleep, but the next day we were really hanged over, and then the reviews started, and one of my first reviewers was Brian Schutmaat, which is you know uh one of the founders of Trespasser Books.
• 54:01
  Emiliano: And I knew who he was, and I actually kind of like Googled um his stuff and what he was doing at Trespasser, and I thought, like, I I would love to do something like this at some point, you know.
• 54:14
  Emiliano: So he was he was someone for me.
• 54:17
  Emiliano: And when he was looking at the pictures, he was very excited, and he said, Would you would you like to publish?
• 54:24
  Emiliano: And I say, I I think I will publish with that guy from there when I was pointing to Harrison, and he said, Who is that guy?
• 54:31
  Emiliano: And he said, He's Harrison Miller.
• 54:34
  Matt: Harrison was a reviewee at this point, not a reviewer.
• 54:37
  Matt: Yeah, he was participating in the critiques.
• 54:38
  Matt: Yeah, he was an attendee.
• 54:40
  Emiliano: He was an attendee, yeah.
• 54:41
  Emiliano: And he was a friend, and he had published something that it was called That Winter Rising the House while uh while the snow covered his footprints, which is an amazing book.
• 54:53
  Emiliano: Um and I I we were in the same room because we were like in this double bed type of room.
• 55:03
  Emiliano: And then I told him that, yeah, so how was it for you?
• 55:06
  Emiliano: And he said, like, how was the review with Brian?
• 55:09
  Emiliano: I say, Yeah, he he asked me if I wanted to publish, but yeah, I told I told him I was I'm going to publish with you.
• 55:14
  Emiliano: And he said, Oh, that's a mistake.
• 55:17
  Emiliano: You should publish with trespasser.
• 55:19
  Emiliano: Of course, you know, there's no way I can provide what trespasser can.
• 55:24
  Emiliano: So, but because of my ignorance, that actually it actually helped.
• 55:33
  Emiliano: Because then Brian approached Harrison and he said, So you're going to publish his book?
• 55:38
  Emiliano: And he said, Yes, ideally.
• 55:40
  Emiliano: And he said, like, why don't we all work together?
• 55:43
  Emiliano: And so Harrison became the art designer of Paraiso.
• 55:48
  Emiliano: And he's a lot of the decisions of Paraiso are his.
• 55:54
  Emiliano: And you know, the printing and the how he prepared the files and everything, how he prepared the dummies, even.
• 56:01
  Emiliano: Uh, the Polaroid section is his.
• 56:04
  Emiliano: Um, and that was great because you know, as a shy person, you know, I love having my best friend, you know, in the process.
• 56:16
  Emiliano: Um, and then when we did the editing, so Brian and Matt decided that we were editing in in Paradise Valley, which for me was this beautiful irony, you know, of editing Paraíso in Paradise Valley.
• 56:33
  Emiliano: And it just felt like victory.
• 56:35
  Emiliano: And we stayed, I think, four days in a cabin in Montana editing Paraíso and having fun and just like being silly and you know, like enjoying, you know, like the time.
• 56:47
  Emiliano: Uh, but yeah, Paraíso uh at that time it was like 300 pictures or something, and we reduced them to I I believe they're 42.
• 56:55
  Emiliano: And this is this is how naive I was because like Brian and Matt were saying, like, oh my god, this is becoming a monograph because it has more than 40 pictures.
• 57:07
  Emiliano: I didn't even know it was a monograph, you know.
• 57:09
  Emiliano: That's that's that's where I was coming from.
• 57:11
  Emiliano: I was coming from an angle of just being very surprised about everything and just being I I would say like whatever you guys decided would be great.
• 57:24
  Emiliano: I I I I know you guys know.
• 57:26
  Emiliano: But the experience, I guess to to summarize, the experience of going to Chico was like realizing that they that I wasn't crazy and realizing that there's actually people out there also documenting their lives and creating stories, and I was not alone in the world.
• 57:45
  Emiliano: I remember almost crying, you know, like in the conferences because I say like what this person is saying about their work.
• 57:54
  Emiliano: Oh my god, I I didn't know I was going to listen to someone talk about their work in that way.
• 58:01
  Emiliano: Uh so yeah, for me, the Chico experience was like this realization that I had something valuable in my hands.
• 58:13
  Emiliano: And it was also it was also a surprising realization that I was actually very prepared.
• 58:21
  Emiliano: Because in the reviews, I think one of the things that surprised the reviewers is that I had everything almost justified.
• 58:28
  Emiliano: They told me like, why a color picture?
• 58:30
  Emiliano: And I say, because I want everything to tunnel to the colored picture.
• 58:34
  Emiliano: And they say, oh, okay, well, if you have the answer, then that's that's good.
• 58:40
  Emiliano: I I they just didn't want me to not know what I was doing.
• 58:45
  Emiliano: But I was actually, if anything, I I think um when I attended university here, that was that was strong, I guess, uh, because when I went to Chico, I realized that I had some preparation and I had some knowledge around uh photographic projects.
• 59:05
  Emiliano: Um but anyway, what they loved about the project, what most of the reviewers uh that saw the work loved is that uh it was very deep and it was coming from a very sincere place.
• 59:19
  Emiliano: And yes, that's why Trespasser wanted to publish it, and they did this amazing job with the project.
• 59:30
  Matt: Another really quick note from me.
• 59:32
  Matt: Now, I work with a lot of photographers, and I'll tell you the thing that keeps coming up almost every single time.
• 59:39
  Matt: It's never the technical ability.
• 59:42
  Matt: They can expose, they can edit, the images are clean, and it's not the camera, and it's definitely not the software.
• 59:49
  Matt: It's their voice.
• 59:50
  Matt: They haven't got a clear sense of really who they are, what their work is actually about, or what they want to say with it.
• 59:56
  Matt: So everything they make comes out usually looking like everyone else's, and we know how easy that is today with so many of us with a device in hand.
• 1:00:06
  Matt: So I built something for that.
• 1:00:08
  Matt: It's called Voice AI, and it's a free assessment that is built around my own voice and what I would ask you if I was actually asking you the questions that will help you get clarity on your voice, and it comes back with where you actually are and what your next steps look like.
• 1:00:24
  Matt: The members of my community mood insiders love it, so I wanted to share it with you here too.
• 1:00:30
  Matt: Like I said, it's completely free and takes just a few minutes.
• 1:00:33
  Matt: The link is in the description below, and I hope you get what you want out of it.
• 1:00:38
  Matt: Right, back to the rest of the conversation.
• 1:00:40
  Matt: Before I dive into a couple of uh individual pictures and pairings that I'd I'd love for you to talk about.
• 1:00:48
  Matt: In terms of the book as a whole, you mentioned earlier about having something to say, and it's such a fundamental part of photography.
• 1:01:00
  Matt: But a fundamental part where so many people struggle, where so many so many people feel kind of lost.
• 1:01:07
  Matt: What with this book was it that you wanted to say?
• 1:01:13
  Emiliano: I think so what I what I was doing while photographing and editing, I think it it was more like I was honoring uh something.
• 1:01:26
  Emiliano: I was trying to elevate the people in the book, and I was trying to elevate the experience of what I was going through not necessarily because I I thought um I maybe I didn't I didn't thought that time that it needed to be heard, but what I thought it was like I need to elevate this so I can I can make meaning of it and I can pretty much not allow this to happen in vain and what I had in my hands was the camera or a few cameras, and what I had in my hands was the the capacity to react to beauty in visually and the capacity to see how tender uh Natsuko was and how tender the animals were, and how tender Don's teachings were, and how beautiful and revolutionary it was to create an initiative and live on a donation basis for years.
• 1:02:44
  Emiliano: So I think it was more like I wanted to encapsulate all of that and kind of like put some clothes in it and put some um decorating it, you know.
• 1:02:59
  Emiliano: Um and what I maybe like I I guess it was I I think this is the beauty of documentary.
• 1:03:05
  Emiliano: And I don't, for example, I don't work I work in an intuitive way, and what I mean by intuitive is like I shoot without necessarily knowing what is the story.
• 1:03:18
  Matt: Okay.
• 1:03:18
  Emiliano: But I'm I'm reacting uh to image and I'm reacting to feelings, especially feelings, especially feelings in the if regarding Paraíso, you know, like I was reacting to a very frozen state of being that was depression, and I was um trying to make my days better.
• 1:03:45
  Emiliano: So I think Paraiso is a project that it's born out of an of a need, necessity a necessity, yeah, a necessity of floating and instead of just drowning.
• 1:04:00
  Emiliano: Um I think that's the story, you know.
• 1:04:06
  Emiliano: It's the the story is someone building something out of necessity.
• 1:04:11
  Emiliano: And what I had, uh that's the thing that I think Paraisu is very transparent in that that is like I am pretty much photographing the things I had I had around, and it was that woman, and it was that man, and it was a couple of friends, and it was my friend the animals, and it was that house, and just living day by day in a way that it was isolating, and it was that river, and I think I think there's nothing outside of the project.
• 1:04:52
  Emiliano: I think that project is actually what it it had to be because I c I cannot say that there's people outside of the project or there are situations outside of the project.
• 1:05:04
  Emiliano: Um and I think that's the beauty again of documentaries.
• 1:05:08
  Emiliano: Like I was documenting and the story was telling itself.
• 1:05:12
  Emiliano: I was I was just there, like I I I believe a lot in the idea of channeling.
• 1:05:20
  Emiliano: I I think we are vessels channeling stuff.
• 1:05:23
  Emiliano: Yeah.
• 1:05:23
  Emiliano: And I think who was speaking, and I'm circling here to the beginning of the conversation, I think who was speaking was the bigger self.
• 1:05:31
  Emiliano: And the smaller self was just knowing the technique of an F-stop or uh speed, you know, in the camera or an ISO or how to focus or stuff like that.
• 1:05:43
  Emiliano: Or what look kind of like nicely composed.
• 1:05:48
  Emiliano: But those technical aspects I think uh they were being used by something bigger.
• 1:05:55
  Emiliano: Um I don't want to use this term bigger as From arrogance.
• 1:06:01
  Emiliano: I don't want to talk about myself in the third person.
• 1:06:04
  Emiliano: I think that's not necessarily what I mean.
• 1:06:06
  Emiliano: I think what I'm trying to say is that the necessity to heal was using the more intellectual and technical stuff.
• 1:06:17
  Matt: That's a wonderful way of putting it.
• 1:06:18
  Matt: And uh I think a lot of the time people don't quite know why they photograph.
• 1:06:23
  Matt: I asked so many people, like, why do you what is it why photography?
• 1:06:28
  Matt: Right?
• 1:06:28
  Matt: And it's very difficult for people to understand or articulate why.
• 1:06:32
  Matt: Um, but you you know, using it as a vessel for some kind of expression or enjoyment or playfulness or meaning or purpose.
• 1:06:42
  Matt: The camera is just a a conduit for that.
• 1:06:45
  Matt: The camera is just a tool, and we can easily get caught up in the technical aspects, which are of course important, but um they're just utility, aren't they, for for something a little bit bigger.
• 1:06:57
  Matt: But it's interesting hearing your your process and how you shoot intuitively.
• 1:07:01
  Matt: But I know you went to Chico with with uh kind of gr grand is the wrong word, but you know, a general narrative of what this was about because you had lived and experienced it and you were shooting through it.
• 1:07:14
  Matt: But when it comes to the images themselves and the and the pairings, and I'm looking at the first pairing of the book with the the the garbage in the yard with the plastic sheet behind it and then the dog playing.
• 1:07:27
  Matt: Um, this speak to me about this pairing because I I want to know if you're thinking about this in the shoot, which evidently you may not be, but when you're putting the edit together and how you describe this pairing and and kind of what the meaning is behind it, it's extremely um meaningful, technical, and poetic in itself.
• 1:07:51
  Matt: And this for me is what elevates uh you know good photography to great photography.
• 1:07:56
  Matt: So can you can you explain this pairing a little bit and and tell us what what you guys were thinking in the room when you were putting these images together?
• 1:08:04
  Emiliano: Yeah, well, I don't know what Brian, Matt, and Harrison were were thinking, but the result for me is is very is very beautiful because uh so I want to speak here, I want to use this pair as an excuse to talk about judging stuff.
• 1:08:24
  Emiliano: So what I'm doing with the still life picture, which is the trash, it's it is trash, you know, it's just like empty bottles, plastic bottles.
• 1:08:34
  Emiliano: There's really no intentional like order in them, they're just pile there, forgotten.
• 1:08:43
  Emiliano: And I remember that when I took that picture, I I was judging it as I am photographing something ugly.
• 1:08:51
  Emiliano: Uh because I I want a record of what the initiative gradually became, which is it wasn't ugly, but it was like what used to be a greenhouse, and those bottles were containing plants at some point and seeds.
• 1:09:08
  Emiliano: Now they're just there, you know.
• 1:09:10
  Emiliano: But on the other side, and on the other page, we have this dog that because I believe dogs are enlightened, you know, I think dogs are already in a state that we would consider the goal, which is to live in the present moment.
• 1:09:26
  Matt: For sure.
• 1:09:27
  Emiliano: The dog is seeing the plastic as a toy.
• 1:09:30
  Emiliano: He's playing with the plastic, he's playing with the with that fabric of plastic, and he's not seeing it as ugly, he's actually seeing it as fun.
• 1:09:41
  Emiliano: And I wish, I mean, I if I had that mind automatically, you know, my life would be perfect.
• 1:09:48
  Emiliano: You know, I would I wouldn't have judgments around stuff.
• 1:09:53
  Emiliano: It's like um I guess everyone that has experience living with a dog would know that your dog reacts to the same food as if it was the first ever or the last ever.
• 1:10:05
  Emiliano: You know, it's like they have this awareness, which I I believe it's attainable to humans, but only if we do a lot of unlearning.
• 1:10:17
  Emiliano: Because we we grow up in a world where we need to judge things, we need to have opinions.
• 1:10:23
  Emiliano: We actually there's a lot of opinionated people, you know, including myself.
• 1:10:27
  Emiliano: We are very opinionated, we we are we have preferences and we chase them.
• 1:10:33
  Emiliano: And if er if something doesn't go according to our preferences, we get angry.
• 1:10:39
  Emiliano: Because anger, you know, anger is a way of knowing that we're trying to control stuff.
• 1:10:45
  Emiliano: And the dogs and the cats, and even Natsuku, because I I I want to I wanted to place her.
• 1:10:54
  Emiliano: Uh so just as a parenthesis of her background, uh Natsuku grew up in a place where spirituality was not as important, but it was automatically to her because she's from a rural area in Japan.
• 1:11:09
  Emiliano: So she was exposed to a lot of Shintoism, and Shintoism is you know like this pol polytaste uh vision of the world where you know the water has its god, the fox has the god, the cat has their god, the stone has their god, everything is their god, and that's that's why she was so respectful to nature.
• 1:11:31
  Emiliano: And so she was in a way modeling also that awareness from a but from a human level.
• 1:11:37
  Emiliano: And I think that's why she was so healing, and together with you know the animals, they were so healing because they were really modeling simplicity.
• 1:11:49
  Emiliano: They didn't have something I didn't had.
• 1:11:54
  Emiliano: I just had too much things that they didn't need.
• 1:11:57
  Emiliano: And that that's what made the difference.
• 1:12:00
  Emiliano: I I I I know for sure that I was depressed not because I lacked something, but because I was I was um I was jammed with many, many things, many opinions, many preferences, and uh life was not going according to my way.
• 1:12:19
  Emiliano: You know, so I was angry.
• 1:12:20
  Emiliano: And I don't know if you have heard this way of defining depression, but depression is anger inwards.
• 1:12:27
  Emiliano: You stop being angry with the outside world and you start seeing yourself as the problem, and that's why one of the most common things of depression is you abandon yourself, which is the opposite of what we need.
• 1:12:41
  Emiliano: We actually need to reclaim ourselves and know at least like befriend ourselves.
• 1:12:46
  Emiliano: We don't need to be the bad guy of the movie.
• 1:12:49
  Emiliano: Um but yeah, that pairing for me was like that.
• 1:12:53
  Emiliano: It was like I'm looking at trash, but the dog is looking at life, it's just looking at the moment, it's just looking at the fun and joy of being able to just play around uh with trash because what he's yeah, the thing he's behind is actually plastic.
• 1:13:14
  Matt: Yeah.
• 1:13:15
  Matt: What we see is trash and something ugly, the dog sees as a toy and playful and and being in the present moment.
• 1:13:22
  Matt: And you know, I have to uh people people know me for how for waxing lyrical about my dogs and and how much I uh uh uh obsess over them, but obsess over them through love, but obsess over them for what they can teach me.
• 1:13:36
  Matt: And if I if I I suffer with anger uh a lot of the time due to a lack of control or be n not being able to relinquish that that control that I want, all it takes is five seconds of looking in my dog's eyes to just feel grounded again and and feel feel love and uh whatever comes downstream with that.
• 1:13:58
  Matt: But um it's interesting you talk about judgment because this idea of consensus reality is upon us all, and it can be so illusory and uh so disillusioning uh in in the way we go about live, our own lives, and the way we formulate opinions.
• 1:14:17
  Matt: And it was interesting, you know, bringing bringing that up now, even with these two images that are so beautifully shot and and put together, it makes you question what you know, this this idea of consensus reality and the fact that we're so trapped in it all the time, and it can really define ourselves and define our perspectives.
• 1:14:42
  Matt: And this really is about perspective, right?
• 1:14:44
  Matt: It's uh perspection, perspective is fluid and malleable, and it's and it's dictated by stories that we tell ourselves as well as the upbringing that we've had and the external influences that we expose ourselves to.
• 1:14:59
  Matt: And we are, you know, obviously highly complex beings, more complex than dogs, but that's the whole idea is that it can really bring us back down to to earth, uh, for want for want of a better word.
• 1:15:11
  Matt: Yeah.
• 1:15:13
  Emiliano: Yeah, I I think, and that's that's what I wanted to say with uh when when I was talking about these questions, who am I, what am I doing, and where am I?
• 1:15:21
  Emiliano: I think the goal is actually bringing you back to that place.
• 1:15:24
  Emiliano: Yeah.
• 1:15:25
  Emiliano: Because when we're just born, just freshly born babies, you know, we are that we are that thing that we actually start missing when we start growing up because we start filling our minds with a lot of ecuations and formula and stuff that just separate us from the I I talk about this phrase waking up.
• 1:15:49
  Matt: Uh, you know, and it sounds a little bit condescending, but it's the same thing, right?
• 1:15:52
  Matt: We're we're most of us are asleep all the time, and uh, there's a web meditation can be so powerful, and it has been for me, but to to be able to have those grounding mechanisms to uh to wake up from this illusion that we we think is reality all the time without getting into matrix analogies, but um you know I don't necessarily believe we're living in a simulation, but the the reality is so subjective and we think everything is the truth through our own eyes, and often that perception is just projection, you know, we're projecting projecting our own desires and our own uh constraints and our own beliefs onto other people, and like you mentioned earlier, when we get something back that we don't like, it's really just a mirror for ourselves, and that perception is just a projection of what we're struggling with ourselves, and this book really exudes that so so beautifully.
• 1:16:52
  Matt: Um, which takes me to kind of another image that um I think is extremely powerful uh once you kind of know the it's a beautiful image anyway, and just looking at this image of of the bedroom and the pillow on the on this uh uh unfurnished bed, shall we say, without sheets on, and you can tell there's something going on here.
• 1:17:14
  Matt: Um I know this was a a poignant moment and a poignant photograph for you.
• 1:17:20
  Matt: Can you tell us a little bit of the backstory behind it?
• 1:17:23
  Emiliano: Yeah, actually the story of why that picture became important for me, uh, it has some steps.
• 1:17:34
  Emiliano: The first step is that when I when I first saw uh the final copy of Paraíso when it was published, and I was in Brian's house.
• 1:17:44
  Emiliano: We were in Brian's house in Texas, and he took uh Matt brought the book, Matt Jenny Tempo brought the book, and I was seeing it under insanely hot sun of Texas.
• 1:17:56
  Emiliano: Um I actually I felt really removed from the experience.
• 1:18:02
  Emiliano: And I I think it's because uh I I I don't know what happened, but I think it's it's it's all this thing about you know what the project means for you.
• 1:18:12
  Emiliano: And when you're seeing the representation of what it meant, you know, it takes some time for you to actually remember, you know, like and I I feel I also think that when I stopped shooting Paraíso, I think it was like a year and a half after that it was published.
• 1:18:27
  Emiliano: So there is all also this time frame where you actually need to remember and get into the emotions.
• 1:18:34
  Emiliano: But I remember looking at it like, I don't know, five, ten times, and then like a couple of months later, here in Costa Rica, I was looking at it, and I started actually remembering the moment of each picture when I took the picture, and when I reached that one, I started crying, and it's because that image hold held for me the fact that the idea of dissolution, because that room used to be, as you say, really furnished at some point when there were guests, and they were coming, and we were just putting like nice sheets on top, and even flowers on top of the pillow, and the towel for them, and incense and stuff, you know, for people to get in and feel very welcome.
• 1:19:26
  Emiliano: And then there was a point when everything was dissolved, and I remember having fear of entering those rooms, the guests' room, because I knew they were abandoned.
• 1:19:36
  Emiliano: And when I decided to enter to that room and I saw that, you know, the bed without a sheet and the pillow without a pillowcase, and no flowers, no incense, not even not even a good smell, I I I remember it was like seeing something death, you know, something that died, and I was just experiencing, you know, like this really harsh reality of we place so much love here and now it looks this way.
• 1:20:14
  Emiliano: And so for me that image when I was seeing it, I was seeing Paraíso for the first time, and first I mean like first 20 times, because it took a while for me to actually think.
• 1:20:27
  Emiliano: Um when I saw that image, I remember it was the first time I cried looking at the book.
• 1:20:34
  Emiliano: Um because I I felt I felt sad, you know.
• 1:20:40
  Emiliano: I felt like like even if there is victory in publishing Paraiso for me, and even if there's a really fulfilling thing, I I also I I still was carrying some sadness uh around that stage, you know, of wow, that was a harsh chapter.
• 1:21:00
  Emiliano: And I I I I remember the fear of entering that room and taking that picture.
• 1:21:08
  Emiliano: The fear of entering that room to take that picture.
• 1:21:11
  Emiliano: And I think when I remember that fear, that's when I cried because I felt, wow, how is it possible that you feel fear in your own house and in your own project that it was lovely and it was beautiful, and I should be proud of it, but I remember I I was not ready to see it from that angle.
• 1:21:34
  Emiliano: I I was I was looking at from the angle of loss.
• 1:21:38
  Emiliano: Um and so for me that picture carried that, yeah.
• 1:21:44
  Matt: Con confronting the the loss by stepping into that room, confronting the acceptance of of what actually happened and grieving it.
• 1:21:53
  Matt: And I think you know the first half of this book is about grief uh as as much as anything.
• 1:21:59
  Matt: And um uh you mentioned masking tape earlier and this this wonderful image through the cracked window with with masking tape, uh, followed by uh you know an image of Natsuko uh which looks like she's had some impact or is in motion.
• 1:22:21
  Matt: Um tell us about these two two images.
• 1:22:24
  Matt: Uh that they're not paired um left to right, they're they're over the page from each other, but touch upon touch upon these two for us and kind of the narrative behind them.
• 1:22:36
  Emiliano: Um so the broken window with masking tape, for me it was a way of something that is obvious, or that that for me was obvious, that it was like, okay, so we were living in this beautifully looking place, you know, where where landscape is the whole thing, and Costa Rica is very well known for you know for being this paradise, actually, you know.
• 1:23:02
  Emiliano: Yeah, a lot of people that visit here visit for that reason.
• 1:23:07
  Emiliano: And there is this picture where there is the landscape.
• 1:23:12
  Emiliano: I I don't know if you notice it, but in that picture there is a heart, a heart-shaped hole in the head in the bushes, in the bushes.
• 1:23:22
  Emiliano: And I remember looking at it and I I thought like that really looks like a heart.
• 1:23:26
  Emiliano: And I I felt that way for a long time.
• 1:23:29
  Emiliano: And for me, the picture of the it's it's like a broken landscape, and it's it's it's an it's an irony because it's like look at the landscape, but it's broken, and at the same time, it's poorly repaired, you know, because it it has masking tape.
• 1:23:47
  Emiliano: And I think masking tape for me, it has many meanings, but in that picture it has the meaning of trying to heal things with things that won't actually be the solution.
• 1:24:03
  Emiliano: You know, I I was battling depression and I was in a way resisting uh a lot of stuff that would actually help.
• 1:24:15
  Emiliano: And I was I was actually trying to solve it with poetry, you know, with the visual poetry.
• 1:24:23
  Emiliano: And I'm glad it it did work.
• 1:24:26
  Emiliano: But in that time it felt like naive, you know, it felt like this monster that I was trying to battle with flowers, you know, like hey, take a flower and just you know leave me alone.
• 1:24:36
  Emiliano: Um so for me that window with the masking tape is something like that.
• 1:24:41
  Emiliano: It's like it's like look at the landscape, but at the same time you see that there's something off about it.
• 1:24:48
  Emiliano: And if you look up, there is this it's almost like putting a band-aid to an emotional wound.
• 1:24:55
  Emiliano: You know, it won't work.
• 1:24:56
  Emiliano: It won't work.
• 1:24:59
  Matt: What was that band-aid for you at that time?
• 1:25:02
  Matt: You felt like it was photography at that time, but what was it actually?
• 1:25:08
  Emiliano: Um I think it was like a sense of positivity.
• 1:25:16
  Emiliano: I remember telling myself, I I I remember telling myself optimism, but it was I mean optimism is good, of course, but I think at some point, especially if you're dealing with depression, is like okay, yeah, you can be optimistic, and that's you will you will get there.
• 1:25:32
  Emiliano: It's not the cure.
• 1:25:34
  Emiliano: Yeah, it's not the cure.
• 1:25:35
  Emiliano: You really need to attend something, and you really need you need to get inside the fire, you know, and let it burn for a while.
• 1:25:44
  Emiliano: So I think optimism and also there was this thing of like me telling myself and telling other people that um that the reward that I was going to get from being in such a low place, it was going to be proportionally the same than than the pain.
• 1:26:10
  Emiliano: And I I actually do believe that.
• 1:26:13
  Emiliano: I believe that not not in a you know not in a way that is like self-inflicting pain, like like you if you focus on the reward, then you will not feel pain.
• 1:26:26
  Emiliano: But I think like it's true that for me the transformation that was going on, it was so deep that it needed to hurt on that level.
• 1:26:36
  Emiliano: And I think this is again circling back to the beginning that I was I was saying that there was this inner voice that never abandoned me.
• 1:26:44
  Emiliano: It it never abandons you, you know, this inner voice that if you get in touch with it daily, it will stop comforting you.
• 1:26:56
  Emiliano: It will be comforting and it will it will tell you like I'm here.
• 1:27:01
  Emiliano: I'm here, I'm here, and uh don't worry, I'm still here.
• 1:27:05
  Emiliano: And I think it was that.
• 1:27:07
  Emiliano: I I think that's the band aid.
• 1:27:09
  Emiliano: Um it wasn't useless, of course, but it did feel like you know, like playing uh an adult's game with you know with toys in a way.
• 1:27:21
  Emiliano: Um which at the end it helped.
• 1:27:24
  Emiliano: It did help, but in the in the moment it felt like um like he was proportionately really small against something really big.
• 1:27:36
  Matt: Fantastic.
• 1:27:37
  Matt: And the image uh I mean there's many images of Natsuko, but yeah, uh, you know, the the the one um you know, we don't have time to go to go through all of them.
• 1:27:46
  Matt: I mean they're all so fantastic, but just because it's next to that uh crack in the window with masking tape, um, and it looks like looks like a motion still, if that makes sense.
• 1:27:58
  Matt: Uh what is what What is going on here with with this image?
• 1:28:02
  Matt: And why and why is it why is it in the book?
• 1:28:07
  Emiliano: So I think it was the idea of the impact.
• 1:28:11
  Emiliano: Um like for me there was something really abrupt of feeling, you know, first very um very illusion very um how you call this, uh very curious and very pure in a stage of where the initiative is working.
• 1:28:34
  Emiliano: And then there is this abrupt thing of like discovering months later that you are in such a place, you know, in such a deep and painful place.
• 1:28:44
  Emiliano: I think it was abrupt.
• 1:28:47
  Emiliano: And for me that picture represented something as you know, like you're just walking and then something falls all over you, and then you're in a crush, or you're in this thing that just changes everything.
• 1:29:00
  Emiliano: And it's actually a pi uh it's actually interesting that I chose her to represent that because she was not going through the crush.
• 1:29:10
  Emiliano: She was going through the crush, but in a much gentler and wiser way than than me.
• 1:29:15
  Emiliano: But I think it was it was perfect for me because it was like watching your idols, you know, also going through the same, and that makes it stronger for you.
• 1:29:24
  Emiliano: Because of course I I felt a lot of guilt around the fact that I was depressed close to a person that because she loved me so much, she was affected by it.
• 1:29:38
  Emiliano: So of course I knew, you know, that she was affected by it, and people that love me were affected by it.
• 1:29:47
  Emiliano: And so for me, watching them going through the same thing, maybe, you know, maybe in uh in a almost childlike way, it felt like a community.
• 1:29:57
  Emiliano: Like I had the support of people going to the crash with me.
• 1:30:00
  Emiliano: And I think it's after that, I think it's a very good selection in the sequencing.
• 1:30:05
  Emiliano: It's after that because there is this fracture in the window.
• 1:30:10
  Emiliano: So of course something crashed there, and then you see this image.
• 1:30:13
  Emiliano: It's kind of like it's kind of like in a similar um analogy than the trash and the dock.
• 1:30:20
  Emiliano: You know, it's like you see this and then you see a poetic version of why it's happened, which is of course not reality.
• 1:30:29
  Matt: Yeah.
• 1:30:30
  Emiliano: It's almost like playing with the idea of the crash.
• 1:30:34
  Matt: One thing I want uh to note here is the rhythm of the book, which is so incaptivating because you know it's pretty heavy.
• 1:30:43
  Matt: Uh and I know you you were you were conscious of of that when when editing, and you know, we get to to almost a seminal moment in the book um with the the image of the sky uh and the the light and the dark on the horizon be kind of kind of being sucked in, you know, and then we start to kind of go through it a different rhythm all the way to to the you know, as you said before, kind of like a tunnel point with the color Polaroids, and then we start to come out of that tunnel into the light and a little bit more kind of hope and optimism and and playfulness and divinity, um, which I think is you know, this skill of putting a book together, it's just so it's just so wonderful.
• 1:31:28
  Matt: Um, but uh, you know, before we kind of finish off the the the images in the book, t tell me about this photo in the sky of the light in the dark, because it's just very abstract and it serves its purpose in the book for a specific reason.
• 1:31:47
  Emiliano: Can you give us some uh well that's it actually that's one of the you know, in the timeline, that's one of the last pictures I took of the project or for the project because that happened after I already knew that the book was going to be published.
• 1:32:05
  Emiliano: And I was coming back from Montana in the in the airplane to Costa Rica and it was in a I think it was in the afternoon, well it was in the afternoon, because what you're seeing in the picture is actually the ref the shade or the shadow of the plane in the horizon, you know, so it's just breaking you know the the the sun and it becomes like this shade in the horizon.
• 1:32:34
  Emiliano: And for me that had especially of course like a lot of meaning because of shadow work and and all that.
• 1:32:41
  Emiliano: But also for me, it was like when you look at the image, there is this inverted tunnel which is not dark to the center of light, it's actually light to the center of darkness.
• 1:32:54
  Emiliano: And for me, I was reversing that tunnel in a way.
• 1:32:57
  Emiliano: It was like this light is coming out from this center of darkness.
• 1:33:02
  Emiliano: And because I was in a place of victory, that's what it meant for me.
• 1:33:07
  Emiliano: And that's that's the truth of the picture for me at least, which is like that's the perfect picture for me to represent how it felt to know that the whole journey I took and the whole lows that I I needed to go through actually became, you know, this gorgeous book and this gorgeous opportunity to speak about an experience from in a way that I wanted all my life, you know.
• 1:33:38
  Emiliano: I wanted all my life to do a book.
• 1:33:41
  Emiliano: Uh and I I I wanted all my life to be to express myself, you know, like I I was talking earlier about selective mutism as a as a child.
• 1:33:53
  Emiliano: What when I wasn't able to talk, and I I remembered all I wanted back then it was to actually be heard, but I didn't know what to say.
• 1:34:03
  Emiliano: And then suddenly I had this book to say, you know, I had this project to say.
• 1:34:08
  Emiliano: And it felt that way for me.
• 1:34:11
  Emiliano: That picture for me that picture is like the inversion of a tunnel.
• 1:34:16
  Matt: Yeah.
• 1:34:16
  Matt: There was a feeling of retribution to against yourself, and it was just like, yeah, f you, I've done it.
• 1:34:24
  Emiliano: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:34:24
  Emiliano: Uh there was a lot of f you, and there was actually I I I have used the word revenge before.
• 1:34:30
  Emiliano: There was a sense of revenge for me.
• 1:34:32
  Emiliano: There was like this like I battled you and I won.
• 1:34:36
  Matt: Yeah.
• 1:34:37
  Emiliano: And of course, I I you know that's I think that's the part of me that all has always been a child, you know, that and it always wants to play with the poetry of life and just make it a narrative that it's fun.
• 1:34:50
  Emiliano: But that's how I I I I tried to to organize the narrative in inside of me.
• 1:34:57
  Emiliano: It was like I battled this and I came out of it, and I came out with something that I actually treasure.
• 1:35:05
  Matt: And um, you know, I mentioned rhythm, and there's there's this moment in the book when I when I first got this book, I was like, oh, uh, this is interesting.
• 1:35:14
  Matt: And and it and it uh when you sit with it a little bit more, it's like, yeah, I this I needed this at this point in the book.
• 1:35:21
  Matt: And I know this was Harrison's influence as much as anyone's, but the the three images of the man climbing the rock, um, you know, for from a technical standpoint when when making a book, tell us why this was done this way.
• 1:35:37
  Emiliano: Uh we needed movement because so the book is edited in a way that it underlines uh isolation.
• 1:35:46
  Emiliano: You know, there is like the pictures are alone, some of them are in the middle of the page, surrounded by a lot of white.
• 1:35:54
  Emiliano: They're dark, you know, most of the pictures are dark, and we needed something that broke the stillness.
• 1:36:03
  Emiliano: And actually, the the following picture from the man climbing is I remember that when we were editing it, we were saying like it it looks like he's kind of like grabbing the stone with his claws, and then then we put a picture of the sky which is broken, and it looks like his claws actually broke the sky.
• 1:36:24
  Emiliano: Yeah.
• 1:36:25
  Emiliano: So we needed to we needed a point of the book where narrative became a little bit more evident and more um animated, maybe.
• 1:36:36
  Emiliano: Um just for the sake of maybe not making it look like a catalogue of pictures, but actually like remember this is a story and remember this this is a timeline, you know.
• 1:36:50
  Matt: That is interesting.
• 1:36:51
  Matt: And that takes us eventually to the the color polaroids, which again is another interesting inclusion, and yeah, I I know there's a there is debate about whether black and white can sit next to color in a book and etc.
• 1:37:06
  Matt: And it's of course it's case by case and subjective, but what why does this work so well when you've you've got these color polaroids in here?
• 1:37:15
  Matt: And what was the thought process?
• 1:37:18
  Emiliano: Um so my first thought process was like I wanted Paraisu to be like this dark tunnel that that ended in a color picture, but that was just too liter too literal.
• 1:37:32
  Emiliano: And I remember talking with Matt Genitempo in the review, and he said, like, if you can do that, but without needing the color picture to resolve things, then you would be in a better place.
• 1:37:44
  Emiliano: But the color pictures were very liked, and they were representing these almost like idealized visions of a day, you know, or of the process.
• 1:37:57
  Emiliano: They look like pen paintings in a way, they look like these um expressions of um more maybe even stereotype way of seeing the divine, you know, like color and filled with light and soft and almost like pictoric.
• 1:38:19
  Emiliano: And they're actually damaged Polaroids, so those Polaroids they were not healthy.
• 1:38:26
  Emiliano: Um expired or damaged?
• 1:38:29
  Emiliano: They uh they were not expired, but they went through X-rays in the airport.
• 1:38:33
  Emiliano: Uh okay.
• 1:38:34
  Emiliano: So they were already mildly exposed.
• 1:38:38
  Emiliano: So they were they were really low in contrast, and the colors were just like, you know.
• 1:38:44
  Emiliano: Um yeah, they were unhealthy.
• 1:38:47
  Emiliano: But that actually helped because it was like still the the idealized version, it was, you know, like permeated and you know, linked with all these other, you know, like more depressive and somber uh looking pictures.
• 1:39:03
  Emiliano: And what we wanted to do there, it was like this climatic point of the book.
• 1:39:10
  Emiliano: And actually after the Polaris, there is this uh portrait of Natsuku.
• 1:39:16
  Emiliano: Uh she's she's undressed, and that was after something.
• 1:39:21
  Emiliano: I I think she just showered or something.
• 1:39:24
  Emiliano: She was just walking in the backyard, and then she passed through that crack in the window, and it was a really interesting refraction again.
• 1:39:33
  Emiliano: And I wanted to give some anonymity, but not for the sake of privacy.
• 1:39:42
  Emiliano: Not for not for the sake of privacy, it was more for because I I wanted rep to represent her more as an impersonal and more like an energy, like a healing energy that that was almost divine for me in that part of my life.
• 1:39:58
  Emiliano: Um and the refraction held because it looks like an immaterial being.
• 1:40:05
  Matt: Looks a little bit like a double exposure.
• 1:40:08
  Emiliano: It looks like a double exposure, but it's just through the refraction.
• 1:40:11
  Matt: Yeah.
• 1:40:12
  Matt: And then that then that really is the climatic point of the book, and we get led into a little bit more of a light-filled, softer and and optimistic outlook on on uh playfulness, on um healing, and it and it ends with uh with a portrait and uh you know an empty road leading, and then this beautiful image right at the end after the credits of someone, I don't know who, but walking up uh up some steps, which echoes so beautifully the ladder at the beginning.
• 1:40:49
  Emiliano: Um it was the idea of circling and ending with a stronger ladder that was actually useful to go up and ascend.
• 1:41:01
  Emiliano: Um and yeah, it was a way of almost saying like the first ladder was to go down and the second one is to go up.
• 1:41:10
  Emiliano: Yeah.
• 1:41:11
  Matt: Wonderful.
• 1:41:11
  Matt: Uh it it's it made my top five for this year, and uh, you know, I'm I'm certainly not uh uh unsure of that decision, but um I do have the artist edition from Underlife with the the closed garden uh section and the prints, which I barely take out because I I just want to keep them pristine.
• 1:41:33
  Matt: I have one, I have one of the the landscape, the clouds on my wall because it's just makes me feel so equanimous with with life.
• 1:41:42
  Matt: Um I'm super proud to be owner of it, but to also to talk to you and um even years on, it's still a it's still such a powerful book.
• 1:41:50
  Matt: So um thank you to you for making uh such a beautiful work of art.
• 1:41:58
  Emiliano: Thank you for appreciating it.
• 1:42:00
  Matt: A short note before we close.
• 1:42:02
  Matt: For a while now, the first thing I've done most mornings before the camera or any other work or before the coffee, before the endless tabs, is sit 10, 20, 30 minutes just watching the noise inside my head do what noise does.
• 1:42:19
  Matt: It hasn't just made me calmer in the way people imagine, it's made me more honest, more mindful, more compassionate, and more free in more ways than I could even describe.
• 1:42:31
  Matt: And that honesty and introspective clarity, more than any lens workshop or book, is really what changed my photography.
• 1:42:39
  Matt: The work I make now comes from a quieter place with more clearness and calmness.
• 1:42:45
  Matt: I noticed what I'm reaching for, and I noticed when I'm reaching for the wrong thing.
• 1:42:50
  Matt: The inner critic still talks, still exists.
• 1:42:53
  Matt: I just don't believe everything he says anymore.
• 1:42:55
  Matt: The app I've used for most of this is Waking Up by Sam Harris.
• 1:43:00
  Matt: It's the one tool I've genuinely kept returning to all this time.
• 1:43:04
  Matt: This is not a paid sponsorship from them.
• 1:43:06
  Matt: However, I am an affiliate partner, and for good reason, I believe that this app is worth it more than any other.
• 1:43:15
  Matt: What's kept me there for years is that it's not just one thing, it's a guided daily meditation, which is the spine of it for me, but they're also short daily reflections, a daily quote that tends to do its own quiet work in the background, and these little moments they call it of awareness you can drop into during the day.
• 1:43:35
  Matt: Two-minute resets when the head starts running.
• 1:43:39
  Matt: There's also an entire library of guest series with teachers I'd never have found on my own, and a lot more besides that.
• 1:43:47
  Matt: It keeps the practice alive instead of letting it calcify into routine.
• 1:43:52
  Matt: So a link sits in the show notes for a free 30-day trial and 20% discount on their subscriptions.
• 1:43:58
  Matt: If you want the longer story though of how meditation reshapes my work, there's also a piece linked through my Substack page called There's No Self-Development Without Self-Awareness.
• 1:44:10
  Matt: Anyway, hope you enjoy.
• 1:44:11
  Matt: Thanks for listening.
• 1:44:13
  Matt: While we wrap things up, I I want to get, you know, to talk less about the book.
• 1:44:18
  Matt: Let's put that to one side.
• 1:44:20
  Matt: Um, people can buy this still from Trespasser.
• 1:44:23
  Matt: I think maybe there's some I I don't know if there are artist editions left, but there are a very limited number of those, so I'm super privileged to have have a copy.
• 1:44:32
  Emiliano: Yeah, there's there's a couple of A-Ps.
• 1:44:34
  Emiliano: Yeah.
• 1:44:36
  Matt: Okay, cool.
• 1:44:37
  Matt: So yeah, please anyone watching, listening, it's uh it's worth the the purchase.
• 1:44:42
  Matt: I I'm keen to hear, you know, we're looking at moving on from Paraiso because it's it's such a such a vocal piece of work.
• 1:44:53
  Matt: It's it's exhibits exactly what you are feeling and going through as well as inspiring others um of what you did experience and you know uh giving insights into the world of depression, grief, as well as healing and uh and how personal it it was to you as well as the people.
• 1:45:11
  Matt: You know, we didn't really talk about Don too much um or Natsuko, but they they are prevalent in that story of yours.
• 1:45:19
  Matt: I I guess what I'm what I want to ask is if we haven't gone through trauma, we don't perceive that we have been through a traumatic event, whether it's it's loss of a loved one or abuse or uh depression, whatever it might be, there is this perception that you know, to create incredible works of art like you have done, we need to have gone through something.
• 1:45:46
  Matt: And that's a little bit of a reductive way of saying it because we all go through stuff.
• 1:45:51
  Matt: And when you reach the tender age of 44 like myself or and mid-30s like you, you're bound to have gone through something in life.
• 1:45:58
  Matt: But does that need to be visceral in a in a project?
• 1:46:03
  Matt: Or can we, you know, the danger of healing is that A, we never really heal, it's a constant work in process, and same with depression, we still have bouts every now and then.
• 1:46:13
  Matt: If is there a fear of like if we're healed, then we might not be able to create something as meaningful as, say, Paraiso for our photography.
• 1:46:25
  Emiliano: Oh well.
• 1:46:25
  Emiliano: Um, that's a difficult not not difficult, that's an interesting conversation.
• 1:46:33
  Emiliano: Um so I think Okay, so I think the important thing about projects like Paraiso is that by going down I learned a way to go to come up or to go back again, you know, and to reclaim my role or to reclaim myself, or not even myself to but to reclaim a bigger self than who I was.
• 1:46:59
  Emiliano: Um I don't believe that we should suffer in order to create amazing work, but I do believe that we need to get in really deep touch with self-knowledge in order to create amazing work.
• 1:47:16
  Emiliano: And if suffering brings us to self-knowledge, that may be because we didn't know another way, or we didn't know a way to to learn stuff without you know the tragic experience.
• 1:47:35
  Emiliano: But I think if we if we actually dedicate a part of the day every day, I'm not I'm not saying here once a week, I'm I'm talking about every day, if we actually practice every day, a way to come back to ourselves, a way to come back to that dog awareness or the big self-awareness, you know, like uh remembering who we are, remembering that we are this thing that we cannot even describe, you know, like it's not necessarily a gender or a nationality, it's prior to all of that, it's prior to all the opinions.
• 1:48:10
  Emiliano: I think if we exercise going there daily, then we will be very exposed to beauty, to beauty, and very exposed to the poetry of life, and we will start seeing that days are filled with metaphors about who we are in the world and what we go through.
• 1:48:38
  Emiliano: And I always say, like, we are the main character of our lives.
• 1:48:44
  Emiliano: Everyone, you know, I am the main character of my life, you are the main character of yours.
• 1:48:49
  Emiliano: Even if you don't have that as, you know, as a as a constant thought, we are the main character of our lives.
• 1:48:57
  Emiliano: We uh we are living life in first person.
• 1:49:00
  Emiliano: We are looking at life from this vortex or like this vessel that was given to us, or this vehicle.
• 1:49:08
  Emiliano: And there's a reason for that, and I think we should have fun with that.
• 1:49:14
  Emiliano: We should entertain ourselves with the fact of like um of giving our lives these epic, ep epic narratives, you know, epic ways of like how I learned to be gentler, how I learned to appreciate better relationships, how I learned to appreciate better simplicity, or to appreciate better the you know the little abundance uh we could have had in moments where we had almost nothing, but we had something and and we appreciate it and treasure that So I think it's about being humble and I think that humility it's the childlike perception that we all need to make amazing work.
• 1:50:05
  Emiliano: Um I I think there is intellectual work out there which is m amazing and everything.
• 1:50:14
  Emiliano: But I think the work that really touches us is the work that is it's owned by this person that we can almost suspect that it it's coming from a very pure angle and from a very um almost untouched you know or almost fresh experience of look how beautiful life is you know it it I think the work of art that does that is the the the work of art that stays with us because it reminds us something that we know but we usually forget that is that I know this will sound like insanely cliche but it's like life is such a beautiful yeah and it's it's so filled with love and we are so we are filled with love and you know we are we are capable of giving up and I think if we do that um no matter if we are suffering or no the work will be amazing because we're we're actually honoring that thing that is the invisible intelligence behind everything that we usually um take for granted you know yeah I think it's in moments of loss that we remember like oh wow I took for granted what I had but I think that's the thing maybe maybe depression in my case because I I I I don't want to you know allow myself to talk about too much about other people suffering but in my case it was like I took for granted something that was very very precious and I just I saw I saw how it was lost because I didn't took care of it.
• 1:51:55
  Emiliano: And I think that was the tragic the tragedy for me that was the crash that was the broken window that was all of it.
• 1:52:04
  Matt: Yeah if I think about my my favorite books there is there is a common theme of um representing and acknowledging the beauty in there in the artist's life and I I I always have this fear you know this is just ego talking but I have I have always have this fear of if we look if we express ourselves with with camera inwardly and we're always looking inward this is this is how I'm feeling this is this is my story this is my suffering whatever it might be it feels almost self-aggrandizing it feels almost a little bit conceited and a little bit narcissic to think that the world should care about me right and that's obviously not true because all we know is us and like you said we are the central character of our own stories and I don't want to say lives because we just formulate the story around ourselves that we call our life um and I you know I had this kind of conversation and uh not really debate but conversation with Richard Sharham the documentary photographer and he's he's such a proponent of window versus mirror choose your window first because it will eventually come back in into a you know telling you more about yourself.
• 1:53:19
  Matt: So he's he's very much like look out with your photography tell a story that you care about whether it's homicide or Cuba or you know the uh mid-America whatever it might be in in his case because in that process it will teach you about yourself but don't don't fall into the trap of thinking that everyone else gives a f about you and gives a f about your story.
• 1:53:43
  Matt: Now I know that's for me that's not true because the things I care about like Paraiso or whatever it might be are about someone's that artist's experience more importantly the expression of that journey that they went through.
• 1:53:56
  Matt: Yeah.
• 1:53:57
  Matt: But do you understand what I'm trying to say here it's it's important like when I went to Chico last year there were so many including my own so many projects about inner turmoil you know introspective work journal you know diuretic work um you know about the person about their experience which for me is fascinating because everyone's different everyone had you know I want to get an insight and half the reason I did a podcast is want to get an insight to someone's mind but it you know in the general in the general wider world of photography and photo books and fine art and you know you sat across from a re from a reviewer how do we not come across like look at me look at me look at me woe is me look at me as the victim of my own struggles uh pay attention to me and my own struggles where there could be more important things that we could be talking about and photographing.
• 1:54:58
  Emiliano: So I do I think self-knowledge is not selfish.
• 1:55:01
  Emiliano: I actually think it's one of the more selfless things there is uh depending on something which is like are we doing self-knowledge because we want to return to that awareness that is not necessarily filled with vanity and is not necessarily filled with uh wanting to be the center of attention if we if we do self-knowledge and we have that and we keep that in place we become this really dangerous version of self-knowledge which is knowing the words and knowing the concepts but not actually walking the talk.
• 1:55:41
  Emiliano: I think if we walk the talk sincerely daily and we look at our vanity as part of our psychological makeup and we we look at this need for attention that we all have it I have it of course we we all have this need to be we want to be seen we want to be perceived but I think we need to understand why like what is trying what is that thing trying to feel inside ourselves and not necessarily to eradicate it or to eliminate it but to understand it and to be aware of the mask I think that's one of the main teachings of shadow work is like your mask will not necessarily fall off because we all need a mask we all need a we all need a name we all need a face we need the mask we need I need being a photographer I need having an occupation but it's becoming aware of the mask as a mask that changes everything.
• 1:56:47
  Emiliano: And I I think it's becoming aware of falsehood in a way and I I don't know if it happens to you but when someone is talking from self-knowledge or or drama in their life from a place of look at me, look at me like look at me as you're saying it's almost automatically annoying it's almost automatically uh we can see what is happening we can see that you know it's what it's happening there is like the person is trying to be seen so hard that he's using stuff that could be useful and I'm not I'm not judging them as they're doing it strategically that but they maybe have not checked that angle of really wanting to be relevant.
• 1:57:36
  Emiliano: You know and I think we all want to be I want to be relevant today of course I want to be relevant tomorrow but I think what makes a difference is like being aware of it being aware of why I want to be why do I feel irrelevant first of all or why why do I want to heal the wound of relevance?
• 1:57:55
  Emiliano: You know what would it give to me and I think if we work on that as much as wounds from childhood, wounds from certain trauma or drama in our life um I think we start understanding that there all of it is psychological makeup you know and we we use some things for our advantage and we don't want to use some things because they make us look back.
• 1:58:23
  Emiliano: But I think if if we incorporate all of that and that's the thing about shadow work it's about lighting the shadow and the shadow is the trickiest part of the ego because the shadow is the part that you know I don't want to be seen as the shy kid anymore.
• 1:58:36
  Emiliano: I don't want I I actually developed a whole personality where I've I convinced myself that I didn't need anyone because that's what I told myself as as as when I was a kid and I had all this shyness you know I was telling myself I anyway I don't need them they're stupid and I grew up with that idea but what that kid wanted was like I really want to connect with them.
• 1:58:58
  Emiliano: I just don't know how.
• 1:58:59
  Emiliano: Yeah and when I look at myself from the wound and from vulnerability it's very different because then it's like hey I I want to understand I'm allowed I'm actually I invite myself to ask questions I'm I invite myself to to be humble and to you know like um ask for help or are or saying like hey I I I I admire you guys can can I join you know that's that's a thing that we don't want to do as adults because we look like stupid or we look like like we are in disadvantage.
• 1:59:34
  Emiliano: But the thing is we all believe we all yeah especially men we all believe we are in disadvantage even the people that you're you admire they believe that in a certain way it would be great it would be great if we introduce ourselves through our wound and say like okay my name is this and I it's like I was saying last Sunday in the master class about uh Simone Weil and how she she was this philosopher that said that the truest form of loving thy neighbor is like being able to go out and ask them hey what are you going through everyone is going through something and everyone not everyone but most of us are really ashamed of exposing that but I I think there is just a very beautiful power in exposing like um hey I I have this desire to be seen uh do you feel the same and you told me yeah I have it and how do you deal with it you know and and if we had that conversation the it stops becoming a taboo and it's actually becoming like we are all doing that every day we're investing tons of energy um so again I I do think it it all comes down to awareness and awareness of vanity and awareness of the wound at the same time and it's kind of like awareness is like awareness is the antidote to suffering.
• 2:01:06
  Matt: It it really you can break everything down to awareness from your desires which is you know desire being a huge cause of suffering we're always wanting stuff but if you're aware of that and you can control it but just as soon as you're aware of everything it just starts to have less of a importance doesn't it and you know I always quote um you know it's not awareness but it's attention which is kind of the same thing um Mary Oliver is my favorite poet who said attention is the beginning of devotion and it it just is it just is that is just such a wonderful way of saying it swap attention for awareness whatever you might want and with photography it starts there and it doesn't really matter you know my biggest the biggest feedback I got from Chico was especially from my friends like Brian and Matt and Brad just like just just chill out like stop trying to overthink the narrative so much like just just be aware of what you're creating.
• 2:02:10
  Matt: It will come and try not to place too much pressure on yourself to be seen uh you know I I I maybe contrary to some people watching my podcast for the last few years like I I don't have a desire necessarily to be seen and often behind closed doors I'm not the most social person but I definitely have a huge need to be understood and this is where my anger comes from if someone doesn't understand what I'm saying or trying to do I get angry because I don't there's this lack of control.
• 2:02:42
  Matt: No I just need to be in their brain to fix their understanding and then you know I don't have to be be angry.
• 2:02:47
  Matt: So there's this this is why I'm like so big on communication and taught in conversation which we seem to have lost these days which is why podcasts are so important.
• 2:02:56
  Matt: But um I'm completely digressing here.
• 2:02:59
  Matt: I guess what I'm getting to is is the importance of awareness but for someone who doesn't necessarily know what how to garner awareness because it is a practice it's a daily practice just like going to the gym just like you know eating well whatever it might be what is your advice for people to start doing that where do we start doing this shadow work or daily practice so that we become better versions of ourselves and and kind of address those those shadows in our persona so I I have suggested in the past and it's something I practice and it's very powerful so do it at least once a day this thing about who am I what am I doing and where am I and then finish with three things that you're grateful you're genuinely grateful for about your day.
• 2:03:55
  Emiliano: And when I say genuinely grateful I mean it I don't I'm not saying say three things that you should be grateful for.
• 2:04:03
  Emiliano: Say the things that you're actually grateful for.
• 2:04:06
  Emiliano: And I think there is there is this I don't know if it's reverse psychology or something I don't know what it actually does but I think when we instead of like looking for how to solve things and we place ourselves in the place of actually already having some of those things I think everything starts to change because when we place ourselves from a place of scarcity then we see problems.
• 2:04:40
  Emiliano: But then when we place ourselves in a place of I have here a fruit and I have a bed and I have dogs and I'm actually genuinely grateful for that placing myself in a in in a in a in an area of abundance you know I have abundance there is I have I have way more than what I need I'm I'm very aware of that.
• 2:05:03
  Emiliano: So I think when we place ourselves there we start seeing more tenderness and more um humility and more curiosity in our days and that already plays us yeah in a road for awareness and you know we start becoming aware of what we have and we start becoming aware of like oh wow I'm I'm realizing that I only think in problems but never in solutions for example um and we start understanding like I actually do have something to offer because I am grateful for what I have and even if it's a charger for a phone maybe someone needs it or whatever.
• 2:05:54
  Emiliano: Whatever it's around you and you know we have things that we can share.
• 2:06:00
  Emiliano: And I think when we bring ourselves there then we actually will have stories that we want to share and we will have projects that we want to share if you're in the artistic area.
• 2:06:10
  Emiliano: Or if you're in the healing area then you can actually if you're grateful uh you will carry an energy that is almost intoxicating for everyone you know it's like people will want to know like hey what what's different about you?
• 2:06:26
  Emiliano: I see that you're peace you know what do you do?
• 2:06:30
  Emiliano: And then you say like I just look at what I have you know and I try to dimension the fact that it is more than enough.
• 2:06:42
  Emiliano: Yeah um you talked about projects what are you working on at the moment that uh we'll hopefully we'll see the light of day at some point uh yeah I'm actually excited about a project that I started like a year ago uh I I I had this period in of my life where I was having a lot of trouble sleeping but like a lot like almost chronic problems and I I started to realize that I I have always almost envied the people that rest like almost effortlessly like they they can just go to sleep anywhere in the floor in the sand where wherever even in the heat or in the cold um so I I did this exercise called online outreach on social media and I asked around uh whoever wants to be portrayed while sleeping or in a resting all while resting please contact me and uh around 17 15 to 17 people answered and it was interesting I I photographing it was really fun and challenging because I was going to most of it most most of them were strangers so I was driving to this stranger's house and they opened the door and said I saw you're no you're doing yeah yeah I am that person.
• 2:08:11
  Emiliano: And I entered to their room and I did this over sharing because of course I wanted to build confidence and trust and that they were it was okay for them to actually close their eyes in front of me.
• 2:08:26
  Emiliano: And so I started to tell them like why I'm doing this project um what sleeping meant for me and I I asked them like do you have trouble sleeping and they say yes or no why yes or why no and so we started having this like um like intimacy through um talking and then like when they went to rest I I waited for like I don't know 10 15 minutes and when they were in a position that I felt like okay this looks like they're already or very relaxed or almost almost sleeping I started shooting portraits and I wanted to fit that project with uh landscape landscape and situations that look like dreamlike or oneric and the whole point for me like the philosophical aspect of the project is like I believe that when we are resting we stop animating the daily narrative and we are closer to ourselves to our real selves or to that thing that it's there um and I I see it as an act of disappearing but disappearing in grace you know I I I believe resting is probably the most powerful thing there is actually meditating I see it as rest cause.
• 2:09:53
  Emiliano: Yeah um and so I wanted to have play with the idea of building a community of people that are not there but there that they are inhabiting the world and they have vessels but they're gone for a while and when they are gone the world is a very different place so it looks like a dreamlike world and um is this the the the plan is for it to be a book eventually I think I think it's almost impossible for me not to think in book form.
• 2:10:29
  Emiliano: Yeah so especially after success of your first one yeah yeah I would say yes and I have been talking with Harrison um and same possibilities we publish it with underlife sometime soon or the next year.
• 2:10:44
  Emiliano: And what I wanted to do he gave me a great idea so I I believe he's like this master of design of book designing because I was having a lot of trouble of saying like how do I sequence 15 portraits with landscape that's just way too many people I have worked in my past with two main subjects how do I work with 1517 and he suggested the idea that what if the book opens and in the cover of the book there is like this folder and then there is prints of the people sleeping and then the book is only the landscapes and for me that was great because I say like that resolves pretty much everything.
• 2:11:26
  Emiliano: I don't need to sequence the portraits I just need to sequence the the landscapes and people can take out the portraits and play with them and the community idea of them belonging to this world or vessel they're all together you know they're not placed or there's no hierarchy in the book they're all placed in the same folder and the rest is just sequencing landscape and oniric situations I guess.
• 2:11:56
  Emiliano: But yeah it's exciting I I do see that project as something that I I would love to publish soon.
• 2:12:04
  Matt: Cool we're we're excited to see it um Emiliano we uh we are uh well over time I've kept you up way too late for those that are watching listening it's past uh it's always 10 30 pm your time so um thank you for your time as always um I hope I haven't taken advantage of it of your generosity too much um is there anything else that we we should be talking about before we sign off is there anything else that we we haven't covered that maybe you want to to mention I don't think so I think I think we'll move everything I could I could keep just talking and talking but I think it's it's good it's good to stop myself also.
• 2:12:45
  Matt: Yeah well we will continue it offline anyway because um you know it's so fun so fun to talk to you and we're very aligned on a lot of the outlook uh and and how we see photography and the intertwining of something like photography with our mind is is extremely and increasingly interesting.
• 2:13:03
  Matt: So um until then thank you so much Emiliano incredible work uh as always we're excited to see what you come up with next and um until we chat again please take care and and thank you.
• 2:13:17
  Emiliano: Thank you I'm very grateful with everything I you have not at all taken advantage I I feel actually I have so no uh this has been an awesome encounter and I'm sure at some point we will keep talking or meeting each other or whatever and I'm looking forward for to that uh thank you very much for now