It is a pleasure to introduce Santa Barbara–raised, Mexico City–born photographer Cher Martinez to those unfamiliar with her wonderfully dreamy body of work. Martinez began taking pictures for her sister’s blog on a simple Nikon point-and-shoot camera, but it wasn’t until she documented a family vacation to San Francisco using her Samsung Galaxy phone that her love for the medium blossomed. Her father gave her her first analog camera, a Pentax K1000, on her 18th birthday, and the rest is (intimate) history.
Martinez, who is currently a film student at CSUN, caught my eye in 2019 with her first series, “The Future of Filmmaking,” which was captured on 35mm film and spotlighted women of color in SBCC’s Film Department. Noting the lack of diversity among her fellow students and teachers, she set out to create a space where their talents and walks-of-life were celebrated. “The Future of Filmmaking” is the first of a series she hopes to continue that will highlight the waves women of color are making in industries and professions still typically dominated by white men.
There is a beautiful yet haunting quality of homesickness and bittersweet nostalgia in her photographs, many of which depicting fragments of the present or memories of past visits to see family in Mexico. She adds depth to her images by overlaying them with text, making them feel like movie stills, or excerpts from a diary. The added text provides glimpses into her intimate thoughts and passing feelings, while also expanding on the notion that images alone speak multitudes. In this way, Martinez subverts expectations, transforming the “mundane” into highly personal art.