I am so excited to be interviewing you for this, as I have been a fan of your work even before I met you. And now I’m an even bigger fan of YOU. Can you just set us up with your background:
Where are you from? What brought you to Mexico City?I’m originally from Bogotá, Colombia, my beloved hometown. I moved to Paris to study, like many of us who spent our early years in a French lycée. After seven years there, I felt this strong pull to come back to Latin America. I had a couple of friends in Mexico City and had heard it was an incredible place, so I thought I would stay for six months… and somehow that turned into fifteen years. I completely fell in love with the city, its energy, its creativity, its food, its people. It feels like home in a way I never expected.
God this is kind of like my story with this city. Came for a year and seven years later I'm still here with no exit in sight. How did you start taking photographs? Do you remember the first photo you took that you felt proud of? I actually wanted to become a fashion designer at first. While I was studying design in Bogotá, I took every photography class available in the program, and that’s where I met a professor who was a fashion photographer. I started assisting him, and through that experience I had this realization, instead of making the clothes, I wanted to look at them and tell the story through images. That’s how everything began.
The first photograph I truly felt proud of happened later in Paris. I was living with a beautiful friend who became my constant model. We would go to the park and shoot for hours, I was completely obsessed with Hitchcock at the time. One day I made a portrait of her and I remember thinking, this is it… this is The Birds. It had that dramatic, cinematic feeling and I was in love with it, ¡hahaha funny to think about that now!
I think I know this answer to this but humor me: Has your career been a straight line or a winding road?
Definitely a winding road. I’ve always wanted to photograph many different worlds. I started being fascinated by fashion, then I went through a phase where I was deeply into photographing music bands, I was living in Paris and the rock scene really felt good!
When I moved to Mexico that project didn’t continue in the same way, and over time I naturally found myself immersed in the world of food. And I fell in love with it. I’m fascinated by the amount of history behind the act of eating, from the fields, to the kitchens, to the chefs, and finally to the people at the table. It’s culture, it’s politics, it’s identity… food is everything.
So yes, my path has had many turns, but in the end there’s a common thread: I’m interested in telling stories. That’s the point!
What were you like as a child? Were there any early signs this would eventually become your career?
I grew up surrounded by art. My mother is an artist, so my childhood was spent among her canvases, making prints, painting, watching her draw, even attending life-drawing sessions. Creativity was just a natural part of everyday life for me.
Because of that, art never felt like something distant or unreachable; it was simply how I understood the world. Looking back, it makes perfect sense that I chose a visual language to tell stories, it was always there.
How do you describe your work?
My work is very colorful, that’s usually the first thing people notice, but for me it’s really about storytelling. Even if the story isn’t always obvious or fully understood, there is always a narrative behind every image.
I think that’s why I’ve been drawn more and more to video lately. I work in a very intimate, almost handmade way, I do everything myself and that allows me to stay very close to the process and to the story I want to tell.
So in the end, no matter the format, what I’m trying to do is create images that hold a feeling and a story inside them.
I feel like your work is intimate, alive, visceral and often makes me want to eat (ha!). What’s your favorite part of photographing food?
That makes me so happy, that’s exactly what I’m hoping for! I want people to feel the process behind every bite. There’s so much work, so many hands, so much knowledge and so many lives involved in what we eat. From the field to the kitchen to the table, it’s an entire story.
We eat every day, so it can feel ordinary, almost banal, but when you really look closely there is so much behind a loaf of bread, behind a plate, behind any ingredient. That fascinates me. I want you to see it, but also to desire it, to want to go and taste it and enjoy it as much as I do when I’m photographing it.
And the fact that it makes you hungry… that’s the best compliment. That’s the whole idea.
What restaurants are you loving in CDMX right now?
I just worked on a book about pulque by Juan Escalona, for which I photographed all the recipes, so at the moment my favorite plan is simply going out for great pulque with Juan and letting him take me wherever he wants. My favorite spot is a place under a bridge called La Crema y Nata (Pulquería Don Julián), it’s the best kind of experience.
I’m very loyal to my neighborhood market, which is close to your boutique. I love going to La Lupita in El Chorrito [ed note: this market is just down the street from our store!] they already know me and make my perfect quesadilla every time.
There are so many new restaurants in the city right now that I feel a bit lost, so I tend to go back to my forever classics: Bar La Montejo, Fugaz, Meroma, Comal Oculto in the neighborhood, and the little café Mado in Juárez.
And recently I had the most beautiful coffee at Crissis in Las Lomas, it even had a sugar rim, which I loved. [ed note: we introduced you to Crissis's amazing founder, Isabella here! <3]
Thank you so much Ana!
Ana was photographed outside our Tiendita in Mexico City in our Moni Reversible Shirt, Relaxed Tuxedo Pant, Tiendita exclusive leather jacket, Tuxedo Shirtdress and Unisex sweater
