Most of us feel like we live a double life when we move away from our childhood home, but the feeling is amplified if that second residence is in a completely different country. At least that’s how Brooklyn-born photographer Zora Sicher felt when she moved to Mexico City to pursue a semester abroad as apart of her studies at FIT. “Being away [from home] for so long, and then coming back was a real switch, it was really difficult for a little while,” Sicher admits to SLEEK over the phone. “But it became really normal.”
This experience of living between two cities became the inspiration for her recently published debut photobook, Progreso 110. Named after the flat she shared with friends in Mexico City, the book documents Sicher’s gritty reality, far removed from the perfectly curated fantasy-like feeds on Instagram. From a nude women standing in a tiled shower with water dripping down her chin, to a fridge plastered with pornographic posters and tacky “I heart NY” magnets, childlike butterfly-printed knickers tacked to a graffitied wall, to selfies taken with friends in grimy, stained mirrors, Sicher’s photographs possess an honesty that plays on the repetition of familiar motifs to illustrate the back and forward flow of her life – the multiple images taken out of a plane window being an obvious example.
The majority of Sicher’s photographs feature Samantha Rodriguez, a Mexico City native with whom Sicher became close friends before first moving to the Mexican capital. “Funnily enough our relationship started with taking photos. I met her at this club [in New York]… where I was taking a video of her and her boyfriend at the time… making out or something,” she laughs. “I said I was going to Mexico City and she told me, I’ll introduce you to all these people. And she really did. We got so close,” reveals Sicher. According to the photographer, she saw a lot of herself in her newfound friend. “I call her my alter ego sometimes because we’re so similar but also very different.” On account of their unique bond, Samantha quickly became Sicher’s muse, a role that fascinates the photographer — Sicher is interested in how her work differs from the images of the male photographers she admires, such as Nobuyoshi Araki and Antoine D’Agata.
“With a young woman photographing another young woman, the concept of the muse is very different to what Araki was doing with the women he was photographing,” explains Sicher. Instead, her motivations sharply veer from the sexual and romantic connotations that permeate representations of the muse in art history — her approach is about “documenting and observing someone and feeling like she was my mirror”.
Amidst the intimate portraits, Progreso 110 also features still lives of found objects — keys, crumpled McDonalds wrappers and a scratched-up CD disc — as well as screenshots of Instagram conversations. “I appreciate and practice very classic photography, but I also wanted [the book] to be mildly anti-purist,” says Sicher. “We had this group chat on Instagram that was called Progreso 110, and when I returned back [to New York]… I would still get messages and we’d continue speaking… everyday,” remembers Sicher. “So even when I left, I never really left.”
Whilst this exploration of digital communication and intimacy forms the backbone of the book, Sicher’s also keen to juxtapose virtual contact with the old fashioned art of letter writing. Along with Rodriguez, the book is dedicated to another friend, Adrian, and features a handwritten letter endearingly penned in red crayon. Sicher refers to this as “a classic gesture of romance” that contrasts with the digital messages elsewhere in the book. Whether its Instagram DMs, nostalgic letters or the relationship between artist and muse, Sicher is interested in the ways in which people dialogue with each other, and the friendships and bonds formed through that.
