A Mission photographer captures the defiant spirit of her neighborhood

The Wide Shot showcases the work of Bay Area photographers, their newest initiatives and the behind-the-scenes tales of how they bought the photographs.

As photographer Alexa LexMex Treviño rides her Vespa down streets within the Mission, she sees the beating coronary heart of San Francisco’s Latin American tradition pulsing throughout, from vibrant mercaditos, to wonderful magenta bougainvillea, to color-soaked murals that function a testomony to her neighborhood’s historical past, id, and resistance. And largely, she sees folks — highly effective, proud, dwelling lovely lives in troublesome occasions.

In the highly effective portraits in her work “Existir es Resistir / To Exist is to Resist.” Treviño’s lens captures the folks in her neighborhood carrying the clothes of their ancestors. Completed throughout her RAÍCES Fellowship with the native nonprofit Accion Latina, which helps Latinx artists in San Francisco, her images showcase pleasure, heat, and defiance — a reminder that this neighborhood refuses to be outlined by outdoors forces. 

It got here from a deep want to indicate my neighborhood by a lens of energy and delight. Too typically, we’re solely seen by our ache or battle. I wished to shift the main target to our power, our magnificence, and the unconventional act of merely being ourselves, particularly in a time when our neighborhood doesn’t all the time really feel protected simply present in public areas.

As a part of my RAÍCES Fellowship, I sought to doc 33 people or teams to symbolize the 33 international locations, territories, and occupied lands that make up Latin America. It was my method of honoring the variety and complexity of our diaspora.

This challenge is my coronary heart on show. It’s a method for me to honor the folks and the neighborhood that helped form me not simply as an individual, however as an artist. The Mission is the place I discovered my voice, and I carry that with me in each photograph I take.

More than something, I hope of us see themselves on this work. That they really feel held, remembered, and celebrated.

This neighborhood breathes ceremony. From the scent of copal from the danzantes blessing the streets, to protests led by the beat of Brazilian batucada — it’s the place we simply are.

The Mission can also be formed by migration. I wished to seize how that diaspora lives within the particulars. The bougainvillea tangled with palm bushes, the wrought iron on colorfully painted Victorians, the nook mercaditos with fruits from completely different homelands. These aren’t simply backdrops, they’re a part of our collective reminiscence. 

I’ve photographed this neighborhood by Carnaval, by protests, by tragedy and pleasure, and the quiet in between. If it weren’t for the Mission, I wouldn’t be the photographer I’m at this time.

It must be Cuba, represented by Susana Arenas Pedroso, a maestra in Cuban dance, and her scholar Skarlet. We began out photographing on Lucky Street and twenty fourth, proper the place El Nuevo Frutilandia was. That Cuban restaurant, now closed, had this iconic tropical pink wall, and it felt like the suitable place to start.

Susana and Skarlet started to bop for the water goddess Yemayá, who is taken into account the mom of all issues in Cuban Santeria. It was lovely, highly effective, and stuffed with spirit. But trying on the background, the concrete wall, the automobiles lined up alongside the curb, it simply didn’t maintain the identical power. It didn’t really feel like the suitable area for one thing so sacred.

So we walked additional down the alley, and that’s once we discovered it. A home within the alleyway utterly lined in vines and flowers. It felt like a floral providing in the course of the concrete jungle. Susana started to bop once more, framed by this greenery and a small wood door, and all the things aligned. The colours, the motion, the power, all of it got here collectively.

I simply hope the portrait I made captures even a fraction of what they gave me in that second.

While she was dancing, an aged lady peeked out of her house and smiled. She informed us that watching them had introduced pleasure to her day and to her life. That actually caught with me.

On the way in which again to my studio, we stopped to say hello to my 3-year-old sobrina (niece). As quickly as she noticed Susana and Skarlet, she lit up. Later that night time, my brother-in-law known as me as a result of my sobrina couldn’t go to mattress with out listening to a goodnight from the mermaid queen. So in fact, I needed to fake to be her on the cellphone.

Yes, undoubtedly. I’ve walked these streets hella occasions, however this challenge made me decelerate and see the hood in a different way. I used to be actually trying with intention. I began noticing issues I hadn’t earlier than, particularly when chasing the golden hour mild. And past the visuals, I felt a lot of affection from the neighborhood. People would cease to indicate assist whereas I used to be documenting. For Puerto Rico’s session, Pop’s Bar gave us “shots for the arts,” whereas Batey Tambó performed the drums laborious for the ancestors, and the exceptional Julia Caridad Cepeda danced her coronary heart out in the course of the road. It was a kind of unforgettable Mission moments.

At the exhibit opening, I witnessed folks tear up as they noticed themselves on the partitions, seen, honored, held in mild. And I broke down, too, attempting to elucidate what this work meant to me. How deeply private it’s to doc neighborhood at a time when so many live in worry, feeling focused.

This challenge jogged my memory how superbly numerous Latin America is, completely different international locations, languages, traditions, music, and meals and but, beneath all of it, the identical beating coronary heart. Every time I stepped behind the digital camera, I attempted to mirror again the power that was given to me. And folks gave a lot.

The closing reception of “Existir es Resistir / To Exist is to Resist” is subsequent Friday, Oct. 17, from 6-9 pm at Accion Latina, 2958 twenty fourth St. within the Mission.