Isabel Herrera

Isabel Herrera

Contemporary Guatemalan artist Isabel Herrera’s works are beautiful, emotional, and fragmented. They stir-up emotions of desire and nostalgia. Looking at her photographs is like grappling through our own memories in flashes. Herrera’s Polaroid SX70 transfers are familiar not banal moments that make us feel connected by shared experience. These illusive gems operate like memory itself.  

To photograph is to capture the present, or at least the expression of that desire, but Herrera makes use of the special properties of the Polaroid to push emotional engagement and heightens sensibilities of the work. Polaroids are both object/artifact and referent/image the conception and creation of which is rooted to the moment in ways neither traditional film or digital processes can accomplish. Polaroid transfers are pliable and fragile. Lush instant-shots invite accident and mark interaction. “The wrinkles, folds and tears form an allegory of the human experience and existence; scars, grief, pain. These apparent imperfections simultaneously assure strength, hope and resilience; a sense of gratitude of being here and now,” says Herrera of her work.

To capture a moment so literally then transfer it, “destroying” aspects in the process, is to create visual metaphor which speaks to the nature of memory itself; it is imperfect and malleable. Memory moves every time our mind’s eye reaches for it. This makes memory more not less precious. For Isabel Herrera processes acknowledges that memory is alive, fleshy, vaporous, and above all, a seductive creature in need of tending.

Isabel Herrera

Untited (House) 2019
4 x 3 in. Polaroid emulsion on cotton paper | Unique | $400

Untitled (Self Portrait) from the Confinement series
3 x 3 in. polaroid emulsion transfer on cotton paper | Unique| $400

Isabel Herrera was recommended for inclusion in You and Yours by Luis González Palma.