Launch of the photobook “WTF”

Launch of the photobook “WTF”

• La Moneda Cultural Center, Citizens Square 26, La Moneda Metro Station.
• Saturday 3rd August – 4:00 pm.

With the photobook “WTF”, the Chilean-Canadian photographer Camilo Fuentealba Brevis (1979) opens a chaotic universe of shameless and funny photographs of the streets of New York, where he currently resides.

Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Viceland, Rachel Comey, NY Mag, and The Village Voice, among other international media.

“WTF” is his first photobook published in Chile and will be launched at the Stgo Foto festival.

One day, ten years ago, Camilo Fuentealba decided to commit to his profession as a photographer and find his own language. He stopped looking at magazines and started looking at the streets, saying yes to all the trips that invited him, taking his camera everywhere, like a servant of his lens. He had just arrived in New York and found unusual scenes.

“I was walking down the street and I saw the photo, I was drawn to it. It wasn’t hard for me, I didn’t think much, I just felt,” he says. A woman wrapped in plastic to avoid the rain, a man with his feet turned upside down in the middle of the street, the scene of a beggar asking for alms while a man in a suit gets into a taxi, a kite in the window of a car. A sequence of images that show a surreal atmosphere in New York and that are representative of the most bizarre impulses of humanity, make up the photobook.

The photobook was published between 2023 and 2024 together with the photography publisher Metalibro, who invited the author to be part of its “L” collection, this time with the support of Fondart Regional – 2023 Call. It is in leporello format, that is, it unfolds horizontally, comes wrapped in a PVC cover and with a poster inside.

The author will travel to Chile to share and converse with attendees.

Credit: Camilo Fuentealba Brevis

Trajectory

Born in Canada to parents who were exiled during the dictatorship, Camilo has always had ties to Chile. His family is from Neltume, Panguipulli, and it was there that he became acquainted with the rural world.

“I realized that we are all the same in some ways, only the customs change. I have been an immigrant almost all my life. In Canada, we were Chileans, and in Chile, we were Canadians. We never belonged,” he says.

That same quality of migrant, on the margins, aware of what unites us as human beings despite social or racial differences, is what nourishes his visual language today.

“What I see on the street is humanity, dignity, but also with a critical eye and with humor. Humans are funny, humanity is ridiculous, but that doesn’t mean I laugh at people. Sometimes we are like zombies walking through the streets and I understand it because we are trying to survive, to pay the rent or feed the family. It is necessary to pay attention to others, to what happens on the street,” he says.

Camilo Fuentealba Brevis.