Leonardo Ruiz Esparza

You work as an engineer in cybersecurity and picked up photography only two years ago. How did the camera enter your life, and what made it stick?

The camera and photography came into my life when I was experiencing a hard period. I was encouraged to start doing something other than working and going to the gym. After attempting several other activities, I picked up a camera and worked my way through the manual, online videos and, eventually, photography classes. During that process, I discovered a highly technical craft that also allowed me to express myself artistically.

You’ve described photography as something you started as a form of therapy. What does it give you that your professional world does not?

It gives me access to a unique mental space that I can only reach through photography. Clicking a button to take a picture may seem trivial, but creating and resolving a photograph is complex.I have to be fully aware of my camera settings, lighting, position in relation to the model, composition, movement and direction. For me, all of this is similar to meditation. There is no other thought—only the flow of photography.

Born and based in Mexico City, how does the city shape what and how you shoot?

That is a great question. Mexico City is slowly becoming a multicultural hub. Its colonial streets and modern neighbourhoods attract many different people and create countless opportunities to produce new and distinctive images.

We are still far from Europe’s avant-garde photography scene, but we are slowly closing the gap.

You say you don’t want to “paint with light” but to play with it. What does playing with light look like in practice for you?

Many people use the etymological meaning of “photography” as the foundation for defining what it is. Nevertheless, for me, it is not about painting with light but about experimenting with it: “What happens if I do this?” or “How will it look if I try that?”

That sense of exploration is similar to what I experienced as a child when I disassembled computers or played with my chemistry set.

You mention Pollock’s drips and Stella’s lines as reference points. What draws you to painters rather than photographers when you think about your own images?

It is easy to think that artists are bound by their medium and by how they were taught to use it. For me, Stella and Pollock are excellent examples of rebels. Who is to say that they are not painters? Even if I am bound by the photons reaching the camera sensor, who is to say that I am not a photographer when I experiment with zoom punches or unconventional editing?

One great advantage is that I do not practise photography to earn a living. I have enormous respect for those who do, as my father once did—he was a photographer with his own darkroom and everything.I have met excellent photographers who are masters of their craft, but they are often required to follow certain standards because of their clients and the expectations of the public. I simply do not need to do that, just as Stella did not need to do it either.

You’ve also spoken about wanting to explore what Botticelli felt while painting his Venus, or Goya with both of his Majas. What do those classical works teach you about photographing people today?

A good photograph comes from emotion—not technique, and certainly not equipment. Classical artists were obviously masters of their techniques because they needed to be. Nevertheless, when people observe those paintings, they rarely say, “What a masterful brushstroke.” Instead, we immediately connect with the emotion within the painting. The Maja is flirtatious and inviting, while Venus is contemplative and almost sad.

I do not want someone to look at one of my photographs and say, “What a great use of strobes.” I want them to feel something.

You call your approach iconoclastic learning the rules so you can break them. Which rule was the hardest to learn, and which one do you enjoy breaking the most?

Two rules come to mind. The first concerns composition, such as the rule of thirds. Perhaps we should call it “the suggestion of thirds.” There is also the idea that you should not place your model in the centre of the frame. Some of my favourite personal photographs are symmetrical, with the model positioned directly in the centre. However, I first had to understand why photographers have spent so many years learning traditional composition rules. The second rule is about where to crop an image. There is an often-repeated rule that we should not crop at a model’s joints—but why not? If it looks good, I crop it.

Your style welcomes heavy editing, underexposure, grain, noise, blown highlights and crushed shadows. When does an image feel finished to you?

Never. I can become hyperfocused while editing and spend hours working on a single image.

I once read that Gabriel García Márquez had to stop correcting his writing whenever he felt he was spending too much time on it. Sometimes, I simply stop, show the photograph to someone and ask whether it looks good. If they say yes, I stop. I know that I still have a great deal to learn. When I look back at some of the work I created as a beginner, I sometimes cringe at how heavily I edited what was otherwise a perfectly good photograph.

Continuous lighting or direct flash, dark and raw—how do you decide which tools fit a given shoot?

My mood board guides that decision. I had a mentor who encouraged me to collect 20 photographs that represented the kind of work I wanted to create, print them and hang them somewhere I could see them regularly. From there, I began creating a specific mood board for each shoot. I try to reverse-engineer how the reference images were made and determine how I can achieve something similar with the equipment and resources available to me. This process has helped me understand that I can accomplish a great deal with very little.

Two years in, how would you describe the biggest shift between the photographs you took at the start and the ones you take now?

The most important change is that I now understand what a narrative means. Everyone told me that a photograph should tell a story, and that is true. However, I used to believe that a single image needed to communicate an entire story—with a beginning, climax and ending.

That is impossible. It would be like asking someone to tell The Lord of the Rings on a single page. Now I understand that a narrative needs to be cohesive and allow viewers to understand what I was trying to create. My technical abilities have also evolved. I have been fortunate enough to train with several excellent Mexican photographers, each specialising in a different genre. This has allowed me to gather skills that I can mix and match to resolve an image according to my vision—something I could not have achieved by remaining within a single genre or learning from only one teacher.

Does your engineering mind ever show up in your creative process, or do you keep those two ways of thinking apart on purpose?

It shows up every single time. At its core, engineering is a creative pursuit. It requires highly specialised skills, science and mathematics to improve existing systems or create new solutions. This mindset appears throughout my shoots. I approach an idea by asking, “How can I create this?” and “What will happen if I try this?”

For me, resolving a photograph means combining different skills and techniques. They may work or they may not, but they will certainly bring me closer to where I want to be.

That said, I try not to confine myself within a rigid structure. Just because something works does not mean I must replicate it every time. Tried-and-tested formulas can be extremely valuable, but they can also be dangerous because they can quickly make us obsolete.

Where do you want your photography to go next, both in terms of craft and in terms of what it does for your wellbeing?

I love this question. I have explored many types of photography, from astrophotography to boudoir, and I have realised that fashion editorial photography is where I want to go next.

It appears to be highly complex, with many moving parts, while still offering the freedom to create art and express ideas. It requires considerable teamwork, but everyone involved—from the model to the stylist—is there to create something.

This will allow me to spend more time in the mental space I mentioned earlier, where nothing exists except the shoot. That is the kind of creative effort that excites me. Creative Director/Photographer/Retoucher: Leonardo Ruiz Esparza @leofiallega

Assistant: Alondra Juarez Aerredondo @alouetteuwu

Model: Angelica Vargas @fangcove_