Home Land
Cinthya Santos-Briones
Abuelas
Abuelas features Mexican immigrant women who came to New York in search of opportunity for their families. Over time they have built lives here and have become the elders of their community: the abuelas. Each portrait in Abuelas is photographed in the intimacy of these women’s homes. The images contemplate the women’s relationship to place, and the reshaping and appropriation of their environment. The home's decorations become part of the women's wider symbolic recreation of culture, memory, and ownership beyond borders. Santos-Briones photographs these environmental portraits in a participatory manner. She asks: “How do you like to be seen or represented through photography?” The women choose how and where they want to be seen in their homes and what outfits they wear. The Abuleas series offers them the opportunity to face the camera and be depicted in a way that reflects their own sense of identity.
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Cinthya Santos Briones, 2016. Gisela Bravo Martinez in her apartment at 45th. St. in the neighborhood of Sunset Park, Brooklyn, New York. She is from San Bernardino, Acatlán de Osorio, State of Puebla, Mexico. She has been living in New York City for more than two decades working in groceries and factories, though she is a professional seamstress. She is 66 years old and is a grandmother of 6.
Cinthya Santos Briones, 2016. Eugenia Cayetano is an immigrant from the state of Michoacán, México, born in a Mazahua indigenous family. Eugenia has been living in New York for 24 years and is part of a cleaning workers´ cooperative named "Si se puede”, based in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, New York.
Cinthya Santos Briones, 2016. Yolanda Leticia, is a Mariachi singer from Veracruz, México and coordinator and teacher of the Mariachi Academy for children in New York. In her house in Jamaica, Queens she has a studio where she rehearses her singing. Yolanda is considered the Queen of Mariachi in New York, appearing in various scenarios around the United States singing the vernacular music of Mexico.
Cinthya Santos Briones, 2016. Irma Verduzco is from Morelia, Michoacán, México. She came to New York 26 years ago, crossed the border with one of her two children. Actually, she has three jobs: cleaning houses, as a babysitter and picking up plastic bottles out on the streets. She lives in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, New York.
Cinthya Santos Briones, 2016. Dionisia Martínez, in her bedroom at 45th. street in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. She is a singer and dancer of Mexican folklore, born in Atencingo, Puebla, based in New York since 2002. Since then she has worked washing dishes in restaurants, selling balloons and cleaning. But her passion is singing. She is better known as “Lupe Cantarrecio” (Lupe “who sings out loud”). She has a role in the documentary “Me Voy” (I go) directed by the film making collective Mu Media.