Your name
Mateo Ruiz Gonzalez
Place of birth
Bogota, Colombia
Place where you live now
New York, USA
3 words to describe you
Bad at this
Why do you take pictures?
I ask myself this question all the time and even more now that photography is so fleeting and sometimes so volatile. I make photographs as a way to remember, as if I'm writing a poem about my memories and everyone in them.
Where do you get your inspiration?
Sources of inspiration are always changing. Words-reading and finding ideas in the books I read are my new source of inspiration.
Who are your influences?
There are so so many, hard to pick just a few
What determines the subject matter you choose?
It depends on the type of work I want to create, either for a commission or a personal project the subject matter can vary but the way I approach it is always the same-showing respect to the subject.
What impact would you like your art to have?
I want people to remember and think about my photographs like when they watch a movie, read a book or listen to a song they like. I want people to think about my art when they have to process their feelings or think about the world around them.
What artwork do you never get bored with?
90s and 2000s punk bands’ album covers
Is there anything you want to add?
I run a photography publisher with my best friend called Antics Publications!

Chilluns’ Croon
Project statement

Chilluns’ Croon is a collection of photographs based on the archive Black Wide-Awake documents of genealogical and historical interest of Wilson County, North Carolina’s African American past curated by Lisa Y. Henderson. The documents include different files; from photographs, family diaries and plantation records to newspaper cuttings of obituaries, town crimes and social events, amongst others. The archive files date from the mid-1700s, times of slavery in the 1800s, segregation era in the 1900s and documents of new local activists seeking to restore and preserve their African American past.
Chilluns’ Croon also reflects on old transcripts from the Federal Writers Project (FWP), interviews with formerly enslaved African Americans, acting as a compilation of stories that resemble old spiritual beliefs and stories of love and loss from the time of slavery in the United States.

Bringing those stories into the present day, Chilluns’ Croon aims to investigate themes of the past such as absence, remembrance, spirituality and mortality of enslaved people. Acting as an intimate and modern portrait of an African American community, Chilluns’ Croon hums songs of hope, equality and change for new generations.

mateo ruiz gonzalez
@mathewfg