The Birds Eye View: A SURVEILLANCE PROJECT ON SURVEILLANCE

Growing up in Chicago, it's wasn't hard to see we live in a policed state. As a result, families that have been around for ages find themselves relocated, displaced, and removed out of neighborhoods, me included. Chicago is one of the most segregated cities in the country. According to the University of California, Berkeley, a study conducted in 2019 on the Most to Least Segregated Cities in the US, Chicago came in as number 4. So, it's not that big a surprise that you feel like someone or something is always watching you, especially in certain parts of the city.

In 2013, I conducted a 365-day surveillance project where I took a photo of a different surveillance camera every day for a year throughout the city. It started one day while strolling through my childhood neighborhood and realized how many blue-light surveillance cameras surrounded me. "Blue Light Cameras" (also known as Police Observation Devices or PODs) made their way into neighborhoods in the Chicago area within the early 2000s. The system, at that time now known as Phase I, was designed to be used in some of the city's hardest-hit crime areas to curb or discourage criminal activity. Phases II and IV brought about new technology like better video imaging, night vision capabilities, and both discrete and marked cameras depending on their locations. It is estimated now that there are 10,000-20,000 public and private camera systems throughout the Chicagoland area.

Through my daily finds, I would have multiple interactions with police, bystanders, and community members. By the end of 2013, I would find myself with an archive of over five hundred different surveillance cameras around the Chicagoland area. I reconducted this same project in 2015 and 2017, leaving me with a library of 7,000 surveillance cameras city-wide. 

The Bird's eye view is an ongoing project as more camera systems in the Chicago area come into play. I am continually looking for more cameras while growing my archive daily.

EYEING CHICAGO: A PRINT SERIES

With new technologies comes old ones. The project Eyeing Chicago comes from an archive of a Chicago surveillance series I did in 2013, 2015, and 2017. Each camera has a story to tell as it glares around, capturing everything in sight. With my love of print, I decided to dedicate one photo for each month and make it a photogravure. 

A photogravure is a photomechanical process that combines photography and etching to make an ink-based photographic print. It's where you would use a photographic negative that is transferred to a metal plate and etched in. Printing a photogravure is similar to printing any other intaglio plate.

 Ode to Warhol

Food always brings a family together, and growing up in a Latina household was no different; you could smell food freshly prepared daily a mile away. Images of bright-colored cans will fill the kitchen. Some of my fondest memories growing up in the inner city were taking trips to the grocery store after school with my mom grabbing all the necessities for that night's feast. The vibrating products with bold typography and loud branding would become a part of my identity. 

Goya Foods products always made the top of the list of brands my family would use. As Warhol in the Campbell's Soup series, these were the familiar images of my Puerto Rican surroundings. I was not a consumer in big-box chain stores but inside little bodegas within my neighborhood. These grocery stores had specific products for a particular demographic, so I began a documentation series appropriating familiar brands on my iPhone. In 1962 the Campbell Soup Cans, Andy Warhol, would take screen printing into the fine art world, primarily used for industrial production. In 2017 the latest technology was no longer print but a device for quick photography, social media, and a virtual world. 

I began documenting with the latest form of technology, the iPhone. Things have not changed much as far as mass production, and if anything, we can see brands target more specific audiences within communities' consumer goods. This series became what is known to be The Ode to Warhol in the 21st Century.