11 · 12 · 06

Elsa Medina on Nacho López

Clara Sánchez

The FICM paid tribute to Nacho López at the National Cinematheque yesterday. The event was attended by photographer Elsa Medina, winner of the “Women through the eyes of women” photography contest, European Economic Community.
Medina studied design and photography at the University of California in San Diego. In the early eighties, she studied with Nacho López at the National University’s film school (CUEC). From 1986 to 1997, she worked as a photographer for the newspaper La Jornada; and later as a correspondent for the same newspaper in Tijuana, Baja California. She has shown her work in individual and collective exhibitions, among them: Between borders (Zacatecas, Zac., 1991), On Nicaragua (San Luis Potosí, S. L. P., 1991), Time and Memory (Mexico City -1989- and Amsterdam -1992-) and 20 Years of Photojournalism in México (Mexico City, 1996).

The photographer shared with the audience some of the things she learned with Nacho López.

How did you meet Nacho López?
I found out they were giving some courses at the CUEC called Expression through Photography; they were on criticism, and on the critical, social, ideological and semiotic analysis of an image. The first class I took with Nacho made me realize that I wanted and needed that kind of approach.

What was the most important thing you learned?
The most important thing he taught me was to take a critical stance towards facts and towards photography; he helped me understand that we, as individuals, are full of prejudices, of social conventions, and that we have to understand our reality in order to understand other people. Nacho opened my eyes to this, he taught me to see myself and to truly understand why I thought the way I did. From that point on, you work on that everyday. He had about 113 books in his reading list, so we sort of read, the list was too long, though it had fascinating books in it. He had a lot of experience; he spoke about films, art history, society. In the first class I ever took with him, he showed us 80 slides with different images, just like that, and asked us at the end what we liked and what we didn’t like. He did this to demonstrate what an uncritical perspective was, and to show that a photographer has to much more than just look.