We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Monica Vilches a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Monica , thanks for joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

It was a personal project, but at the same time a community project, if we can call it that. perhaps the project that makes me most proud, my first documentary. I am passionate about documentaries, I think you have a incredible flexibility to tell stories in documentaries, beyond the technicality involved in making any film project, the language of a documentary gives you freer tools in terms of theme or modes of expression, I truly wanted to do something small, without great research or so much thematic depth, so I chose with great affection and admiration to make the documentary of a group that I attended many times. “Bohemia Friday: The Documentary”, tells the story of a group of poets and singers from Phoenix Arizona, where the passion for being an artistic meeting place spread for years and in many Phoenix venues, artists and performance from Puerto Rico, Argentina , Mexico, Cuba, Chile, gathered every Friday in a chosen place and spent whole hours accompanied by guitars, lyrics, dances, theater. It became the platform for many well-known artists in the city, the organization of this group was done so professionally that anyone thought that the organizers earned money from this, and the truth is that the organization never received a penny for this artistic movement; When this artistic movement ended for the organizers because of the years were already weighing and people no longer attended as before, I thought it was unfair that it remained a simple memory of a few, and I decided to make this documentary on my own, I fell in love with the idea and organized myself to investigate the first steps, I started a list of people to interview, I asked the questions I wanted to know based on the origin of this movement,So i grabbed my camera, my light and microphone, a list of questions in hand, I started my project With great emotion, I made a mini trailer of the documentary and many were moved and encouraged to participate, it was an adventure that I will never forget, and I am sure that neither will bohemians .

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I am a freelance artistic photographer, born and raised in Chile, the longest and narrowest country in the world; I discovered the art of images at a very early age while playing with my sister to be models all afternoon, with the hours I discovered that the little black box that I had in my hands needed a roll to create the image, but I also discovered there, that even without the roll of film, I was already a seeker of images, and that what I saw through that little lens was a magnificent creation of light playing in the shadows, I understood that it was what I wanted to do all my life, capture and freeze moments of life, recognize the expression of nature when it poses in front of you, become a creator of new images, I will definitely do this all my life. This same passion led me to become obsessed with the artistic world, and i started to devour movies, documentaries, tv shows. Over the years, the beautiful art of the platforms, the theater, came into my life; I was in several theater companies and we even won an award and traveled throughout Chile making performance; I was also a columnist for a local newspaper, proudly the youngest of the columnists.
Inspiration sometimes comes from the same path you are doing, I didn’t want to be famous, I wanted people to see my work and say, “I understand what you mean”, and of course, imagine what I felt the first time someone bought a photograph framed ! . My focus and my mission I think is to never stop discovering what that little dark box can give me through light, I love all kinds of artistic expression and it bores me a lot when I’m not in creative mode, not a day can go by life without not seeing something creative in a photo; Every day there are rays of sunlight that flirt with the shadows; photography is not just pressing a button, if people caressed the magical moments more, maybe we would all be photographers and we would wander around the world capturing life.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

People often tell me that I tell stories with my images, and it is true in a way, but what is special about this is that although that is the intention, it is the people who feel or see the story behind my photography. You can see the photo of a tree leaf with different intentions, but in the end the observer will tell the story of that image based on his feeling. So the most rewarding aspect of my job is to make people experience different stories that they tell me, they smile and feel touched just by an image, I feel the hug when someone says to me, “Hey, I like this photo, it tells me deep things … Thank you” . And that fills my soul because I know I’ve done something that moved a person.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

Support… Supporting your artist is not only saying that you do well, that motivates and caresses some ego, but what really helps and supports the most is consuming the artist’s work. When someone buys my work or a photograph, it tells me that they not only like what I do but that they appreciate the effort that goes into a creative work. You can also create market spaces for creative artists, generate more visualization of the artist at a higher level, sometimes as creators it is not only enough with social networks, share with your friends, write a post about your artist, mention it, show the work that you bought from the creator. little things that turn out to be great motivations for us .

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/planeta_de_lamon/

Image Credits
Monica Vilches

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