Across a career that spans four decades, the photographer Stefan Ruiz has crafted an archive of work that continually looks at the varying styles of Latin subculture. As a result, he’s captured broader cultural shifts that shape these groups, not explicitly seen within the frame but understood as we look back to the pictures in the context of when they were shot. His new work for Apple’s group exhibition I Remember You is yet another example of this curiosity.
Stefan is perhaps best known for the series Cholombianos, a “totally viral” story published in the early 2010s about Mexican kids in the state of Monterrey with a shared love of cumbia, a traditional Colombian musical subgenre (that has evolved more recently into popular club music, making its way to The New York Times just last month), and the radical, idiosyncratic haircuts many people affiliated with the scene sport. It’s a perfect story for Stefan. ”I’ve always liked crazy alternative youth culture,” he says, “and I’ve got a weird obsession with hair.” Check out Mullets of Medellin for further evidence of this.
Long before Cholombianos and Mullets of Medellin, Stefan shot a handful of commissions for i-D. One was about the kids involved in San Francisco’s rave scene in the early 90s. Stefan, a native Californian, was living in Oakland at the time and managed to turn a one-photo assignment into a full story. Then, following some time spent in London, he took portraits of Goldie, Brian Eno, and a rising young Central Saint Martins graduate called Lee McQueen.
As we chat, Stefan finds a picture on his iPhone from the San Francisco story in i-D to show me, as the group shot includes his old friend Willy Chavarria, then a student, now one of New York’s most respected independent designers (and the Senior Vice President of Design at Calvin Klein).
Willy’s work and Stefan’s imagery share a natural bond. Both are indebted to Mexican subculture and, more specifically, its satellites in New York and California (where Willy hails from, too). In fact, the four subjects on the wall next to us that Stefan shot for I Remember You have also modelled for Willy’s label.
The wider show spotlights five photographers using the new iPhone 15 Pro Max, with curatorial direction from Isolde Brielmaier, Deputy Director of the New Museum and Guest Curator at the ICP. Each photographer provides a different take on the show’s nostalgic theme and the camera’s ever-growing capacities, but Stefan’s images give the show its most intimate moment, showcasing a remarkable depth and softness despite their studio setting.
It helps that Stefan has shot all four men previously and has built a friendship with each of them. There’s still a hint of rigidity and awkwardness to their poses, as curator Isolde notes when introducing the work. This only stands to make the resulting photographs more engrossing. After all, the subtle details in portraits and the subjects’ body language have been pored over for centuries in search of clues about the relationship between artist and sitter. “I have photographed them at least three times before this, but this came up, and there are things I still wanted to explore with them,” Stefan says. “I think I’ve actually been getting better ones of them over time”.
“I like the fact they were from this area in Mexico – Puebla – where most of the migrants in New York are from,” he adds. “The nickname amongst Mexicans in New York is Puebla York because there’s so many people from there.”
A story of evolving style, beauty, masculinity, community, nationality have always coalesced in Stefan’s portraits. His work for I Remember You continues this lineage.
More images from Apple’s ‘I Remember You’ can be viewed here.
Credits
All images courtesy Apple