STEFAN RUIZ: For me, what I've always been interested in is
this contrast between rich and poor, between--
just the craziness of the world.
How different people live different ways.
People are the same.
People are different.
But just to try to photograph, in a similar way, all these
different things, and let them speak for themselves.
I would say people think of me as a portrait photographer--
Well, no.
It's weird.
Because some people think of me as a portrait photographer.
Other people think of me as a landscape travel photographer.
So I kind of like that, because they
don't always cross.
I think in the States, especially, I'm considered
this third world photographer, who photographs down and outs
or something.
I don't really know.
I do tons of celebrity portraits for the Sunday
newspaper magazines in the UK.
I photographed James Brown for them.
I photographed P Diddy.
Liza Minnelli.
I don't know.
All kinds of people.
I'm still pretty shy, but I was really shy.
And for me to meet people, or do anything, the good thing
with photography, and working for magazines, or just
travelling and going on these things was I was thrown into
these situations where I just had to deal.
And I like that.
And I like the fact that I get sent places, and from one week
to the next, I'm not really sure who I'm going to meet,
where I'm going to go.
And I'll do advertising.
I'll do my own stuff.
I'll do portraits of celebrities, or poor people,
or I'll do some kind of documentary thing.
And for me, it's always interesting.
I'm definitely a hoarder, a collector.
It runs in the family.
My mom is a crazy hoarder.
It's so hard for me to throw anything away.
But at the same time, I travel all the time, and I've gotten
quite good at going places and buying things that you can't
really find in other places, or it's
harder to, or whatever.
I buy photographs.
I buy things that I think are weird I buy anything
portrait-based.
Cups.
I don't know.
I bought five jockey coffee mugs the other day, because
they're portraits of jockeys.
It's just retarded.
I like this one, because he's kind of like Burt Reynolds.
I don't know why I collect portraits.
I think that portraits just kind of work, aesthetically.
Some of this is from Mexico, South Africa.
I've got my Pablo Escobars.
We've got Robin Hood, and him as a businessman or a Senator,
and then him casual.
They're made by a guy in [INAUDIBLE].
This is from Mexico.
These are some of my favorite types of photographs.
These are these carved old photographs.
I've got a bunch of them.
They're really fragile.
A lot of them are really old.
These are photos I bought in Egypt.
So these are Egypt in the '70s.
Yeah, they're hand-colored from the '70s.
They got a little wild there in the end.
But I'm into studio photography.
I got this in Colombia.
I think it's a photographer's advertisement for his skills.
I like this one.
We have the butt.
We have the beer being poured.
I like that one.
Or that.
What else?
I collect records as well.
This is Gal Costa.
I also like this one, though.
This is one of my favorites of the moment right now.
The salsa is my law, really.
This is Patrick, trusted assistant for years now.
I'm from San Francisco.
I went to university in Santa Cruz.
I studied drawing and painting, and I got into
photography kind of by accident.
I worked for a professor of mine in Northeast Ivory Coast.
That first trip, I didn't consider myself a
photographer.
I liked taking pictures, but I just wanted to travel.
I think that's how I got into photography.
The first photos I took were actually there.
I went back to California.
I had no money.
I got a job in a bar.
And while I was working in the restaurant, I was also
teaching drawing and painting at San Quentin, at the prison.
And then I really wanted to take pictures of them, so I
started taking all these photos.
And then I put this whole little notebook together.
And I would carry this box.
This was before laptops, everything.
Maybe I'd changed boxes at one point, but this
is basically it.
I used to bring this to Europe with me all the time.
And then I would show this, and this is how I'd get jobs.
So these are a couple of guys from my class.
5150s, clinically insane.
So these are all from the early '90s, I'd say.
In London, you'd always have meetings in the pub.
And as I'd get more and more drunk, eventually I would
start showing my photos to people.
And one of the guys, he started doing "Caterpillar."
And he basically hired me to do photos like my photos from
the prison for caterpillar.
That's when I first started really making some money, and
start figuring, maybe I could make a living at photography.
The guy I worked with on "Caterpillar," he started
working at "Camper." And then he hired me for the first
campaign he did there.
And I did six campaigns with "Camper." He wanted something
a little bit quirky, and he gave us a lot of freedom.
Tons of freedom.
It seemed like we could do anything we wanted.
And then, when I was probably on the fifth or sixth campaign
for "Camper," I was asked to be creative director at
"Colors."
"Colors" was this magazine that took things, and each
issue had a theme.
Whether it was war, or whatever.
And instead of doing a type of documentary photography that
was probably seen a lot at that time, we were trying to
do a more polished image of this thing.
Not artificial, but just, maybe, well-lit,
well-composed, hopefully respect.
Quite interesting to look at.
I'd take the same equipment I would take to photograph some
celebrity, I would take on my ad jobs.
And I would set it up pretty much the same way.
But you're photographing a refugee, or
maybe a doctor or something.
Not necessarily a stolen moment.
Something that is about participation.
Where the sitter has to participate in
the photo as well.
You're not just taking something from them.
Kind of like this negotiation or something.
You have to work with the person.
Some of these are my own projects,
and then other stuff.
The telenovelas series is something that is definitely
important to me.
The telenovela project started with "Colors." The idea of
doing a whole issue on soap operas in Mexico City came up.
I thought they were interesting, because so many
people watched them, because it's kind of like there's
these unattainable dreams for the people watching them.
But there's all these social and political things that are
behind it and in it.
You're dealing with things like with money, with race,
with these Cinderella stories.
Part of it was also because half my family's from Mexico.
And my family came across the border illegally.
They were poor, trying to better themselves, whatever.
Trying to get this dream.
It all kind of made sense to me in that way.
I've been shooting in Mexico a lot of over the years, and
tomorrow I'm going back to shoot, but
to start a new project.
I'm going to Mexico tomorrow, so I'm packing now.
I'll probably throw my clothes in with the tripod and stuff.
I travel with this, the lights.
Some light stands here.
This is the camera I use.
It's a great camera.
These are film holders.
This film here goes in there.
And that's kind of it.
And all my spare Mexican pesos.
OK.
So we just got here in Monterrey.
I've been to a lot of places in Mexico, but not here.
We came to Monterrey, Mexico to do a shoot on the fashion
and hairstyle of these kids who listen to a lot of
vallenato and cumbia from Columbia.
They call themselves Colombians, but they're not
Colombians.
They're from Mexico, and particularly,
they're from Monterrey.
I don't know.
They've been called "Cholombians."
With that like documentary-style portrait,
you're really dependent on the people showing up.
And a lot of times, they don't show up.
Because they don't know you, and they don't really--
I think you've got to bring yourself to them.
So first, we went to the market, where they buy music,
and they can buy videos, shirts, hats, trinkets,
Colombian things, Colombian pictures.
They buy this, and it's kind of a gathering point.
They sell a lot of bootleg films, and there seems to be a
little brothel behind where we are shooting.
I didn't want to shoot them, necessarily, with all the
grime and stuff, like, say, in the market.
I wanted to keep the image clean.
Because they're interesting enough on their own, and I
think the background would just distract.
I wasn't trying to make some kind of social statement about
where they live, or about anything like that.
It's more about them and their style.
I still shoot mostly with the 4x5.
Almost only.
My camera is made in Germany.
It's a Linhof.
I'm like this dinosaur.
I get hired on ad jobs to use my 4x5, and then the art
directors are like, wow, I haven't seen one of
those in a long time.
They're really slow, though.
Sometimes I hate my camera.
But it's great at the same time.
I guess the thing was, I was never really a 35 millimeter
kind of war photographer style, like run around, shoot.
Snap, snap, snap.
Different angles and stuff.
Since I did do painting, and since I was used to setting up
compositions, I felt more comfortable with that.
Still trying to figure out my framing here.
I've never really been into the idea of trying to convince
someone to do a photo by giving them money.
I think it creates kind of a weird dynamic.
So my way around that, a lot of times, has been to just
shoot Polaroids, and give them Polaroids.
So I'm giving him the one he likes the most.
And keep a few for myself, so I can work out what I'm doing.
I can critique how this shoot's going.
I will also show them what I'm doing.
I think it builds a sense of trust, if they look at the
Polaroid and they see what I'm doing.
They show it to their friends.
Their friends get interested, their friends want pictures.
We just got our first shot, about five or six guys.
Tonight we're going to a party, and if all goes well,
we'll be working pretty fast, and we'll
get quite a bit done.
Obviously, people are hearing a lot about Mexico these days
for violence and drugs.
I've been coming here fairly often, and I've never really
had bad experiences so far.
But you can tell that there's some tension here.
We knew of some concerts, and we were going to try to shoot
in these clubs, but when we asked for permission, the
owner said no, because a lot of gangsters or narcos hang
out in these places.
They said it's quite dangerous for us.
That at least we'd get beat up, if not worse.
And they also said that the kids probably stay away from
there more now.
So we went out to the suburbs.
We went to a club called Lone Star.
And basically, that had tons of these kids there.
They are quite young.
They seem to be all mostly teenagers.
And basically, they dance around in circles.
It all seems pretty mellow, actually.
PATRICK: The way Stefan shoots is we always do kind of a
portable photo studio.
We try to find a wall, usually.
But this one has too much texture to it.
So we want to keep it simple.
STEFAN RUIZ: I've shot a lot of times outside clubs, or all
over the place.
I'm quite used to doing this.
I like doing it.
I'll often let the person pose themselves.
I'll compose it the way I like, but I often want them to
present themselves.
Whether it is a refugee, or someone who's insane, or some
politician.
When I was, I think, 16, my parents got divorced.
And my dad was a lawyer.
My mom was an art teacher.
She wanted to go to Italy, because her family was from
Italy, and she wanted to go there.
And we went and lived in Florence.
At that point, I totally didn't like Renaissance
painting or anything.
I finally got into a school, like a high school.
An art high school.
And so I had to copy all these famous paintings.
I had to copy famous sculptures.
And by the end of year, I actually started getting quite
into Renaissance art.
I especially like the older portraits and stuff.
And I like Flemish painting a lot, too.
I would say that's a huge influence in my portraiture.
So we got quite a few people that night.
Maybe 20?
I don't know.
We stayed there until about 3:00 in the morning.
Yesterday, we photographed downtown.
There's a 7-Eleven that's below a radio station.
All of the Cholombianos, they hang out there.
We went there.
We just picked some of the guys, asked them.
And if they're into it, then we set up a little studio
around the block.
And yeah.
I think we got a lot of good things.
At the end of the day, I think that work should work on a lot
of different levels.
It should be interesting to look at.
It should be technically well-done.
The subject itself, hopefully it's got a political thing.
Maybe the photo makes you think about something.
Maybe it's not just eye candy.
It's not just a one idea thing.
All right.
I think we're done.
I think I'm going to be really happy with this shoot.
I think these guys are pretty genius.
And just by taking time to document their style, I think
I'll be really happy with it.