Photographer of the Year winner Citlali Fabián: ‘Photography can be incredibly powerful as a tool for rediscovering yourself’ | Tradition

In every {photograph} by 37-year-old Citlali Fabián, yow will discover the story of an encounter, in addition to an try and painting reminiscence with dignity. For her collection Bilha, Stories of My Sisters, the artist — who hails from the Yalateca Indigenous group within the Mexican state of Oaxaca — was named Photographer of the Year on the 2026 Sony World Photography Awards, run by the World Photography Organization. This is likely one of the most prestigious recognitions in her area.

Eight photographic portraits — taken and manipulated by the artist — strengthen the legacy of activists in Oaxaca who defend water, territory, linguistic range, ladies’s rights, native corn varieties and native cinema.

Fabián has been a fellow with the Magnum Foundation, in addition to a National Geographic Society explorer. She’s additionally a part of the Women Photograph and Indigenous Photograph collectives. In 2018, her collection Mestiza was chosen as one of many 13 favourite photograph tales by The New York Times and, in 2023, she was invited by World Press Photo to function a regional decide.

She now lives in London within the U.Ok., and describes herself as a photographer from the Yalalteca group and as a first-generation migrant. She grew up in Oaxaca City: there, she remembers receiving the rolls of movie that arrived at her father’s store to be developed. “The connection with the people and the understanding that they were collecting memories marked me in a way that I can’t separate from my life,” she says in an interview with EL PAÍS.

Later, she studied images and received a scholarship to go to the George Eastman Museum — the oldest museum devoted to images — in Rochester, New York. There, she acknowledged her group in images taken by Lola Álvarez Bravo and Mariana Yanpolski, outstanding Twentieth-century Mexican photographers.

“It was inspiring to find so many photographs of Oaxaca in an archive and to think that my grandparents had been to those places,” she says.

Among captions like “unnamed” or “a place known as Sierra Norte,” she encountered descriptions far faraway from what was acquainted to her. “It was very powerful to see my grandmothers in portraits and to find people whose names were no longer known. That gave me the motivation to continue taking my photographs,” Fabián remembers.

Image as ritual

At a time when cameras have develop into a part of on a regular basis life, the Indigenous artist evokes the reminiscence of her grandmother and transforms images right into a ritual.

“For me, photography — and the ritual of being photographed — are connected to understanding the practice as an extension of memory. My grandmother saw photography as a very special moment: if I told her I wanted to take her picture, she would go and do her hair and get ready. She only had one photograph of her mother, and it’s the only memory she has of her. I began to understand how photography can be a moment to reconnect with memory; it can be incredibly powerful as a tool for rediscovering yourself.”

In Fabián’s work, the ritual goes past the second of urgent the shutter. It’s within the cotton thread that runs by a collection of black-and-white images of her ancestors, within the picture of herself as a toddler, printed on cloth inside a hoop that holds her embroidered reminiscence of the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca; and in a seed sprouting from her navel, captured in moist‑plate collodion (a photographic method) in her collection Ben’n Yalhalhj – I’m from Yalálag – Soy de Yalálag.

Her work entails reconnecting together with her territory. It’s rooted in bodily areas, but in addition within the prolonged relationships of a household tree and a migrant group. “In the region I come from, photography wasn’t accessible until recently. Being able to preserve a memory in this way is a privilege. How do you honor that privilege? Not necessarily with the camera, but with the image.”

Just because the materiality of a picture is essential, so is the person and collective course of behind every of her images.

Fabián explains it this fashion: “I see how my context impacts the way in which I create. With the colonizing and patriarchal history of photography, our perspectives and ways of creating are more necessary than ever, especially in the world we live in, where we encounter so many narratives that erase identity. Like war coverage in Palestine, for example: many media outlets continue to perpetuate the colonizing gaze of turning a human being into the ‘other,’ someone without an identity.”

Collectivizing the method

With her digital camera in hand, Fabián proposes one thing completely different. And, with the award-winning collection Bilha, Stories of My Sisters, she demonstrates the opportunity of practising images by a shared course of, holding collective reminiscence in thoughts.

“In this series, the photographic act took a back seat,” she explains. “By the time we began each session, we had already had coffee, we had talked for at least two hours, and I could understand the spaces they liked for their portraits. That’s what made the difference: the photo was important, but the connection we could achieve and my interest in their stories were even more so.”

More than an outline of her artistic course of, Fabián speaks of a technique in progress and an inventive and political proposition. “I seek to find a world in which the person portrayed can feel included in the decision-making process around the photograph in which they’re being represented,” she says.

This course of doesn’t finish with the photograph shoot, however continues with the assessment and choice of photos for the collection. “As a photographer, I might have preferred other images visually, but the important thing about this gesture is to honor their decision. If you don’t feel comfortable with what I believe is the best photo, then it isn’t the best. And that must be respected,” she clarifies.

For her, it’s a matter of illustration and artistic accountability. “As creators from the Global South, we have that responsibility. Not only to our own communities, but to the communities of the Global South that have never been represented with dignity — in ways that allow us to find ourselves in the images. I hope that, when people see my images, they can find a space where they can say, ‘Yes, that’s me.’”

Fabián celebrates her skilled recognition as a shared achievement with the individuals who participated in her collection. She additionally celebrates that, by every picture, their tales can journey farther into the world. But her biggest dream is to offer the collection the fabric type of a e book and produce it again to every of her communities, in order that youngsters can see themselves represented — to have a look at the images and say, “yes, that’s us.”

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