Faber Franco playlist
Faber Franco is an eclectic music lover: reggaeton, techno, classic rock and disco are some of the genres that have passed through him. This is a glimpse into his creative process through his own playlist. Our recommendation: as you read on, give each song a try.
Photography: Faber Franco, Text: Francisca Ceballos
Hercules and Love Affair is the band I remember most from the day we went to capture Rossina Bossio in Sopó. "Turn up the volume," Faber said in the booth in the back as he danced to the sound of his own playlist. Rossina asked him about every song that played and that opened the door for Faber to finally speak profusely..
–
Faber Franco was led to photography by chance in 2010. He needed to do an assignment for college, and since no one would lend him a camera, his stepmother bought him a battery-powered one. He liked taking pictures so much that he threw it on the floor twice to damage it and get another one, a battery-powered one. Later, with an inheritance left to him by his mother, he bought himself an interchangeable lens reflex camera. Chance put him in a situation that preluded the lack of the device, which he fell in love with and obtained through persistence.
After exploring different subjects he began to take portraits of himself. It was not a conscious process, but a form of recursion. "I started by taking pictures of landscapes or close-ups of flowers and objects, but then I became aware of my existence." He began to use his body as a device, the immediacy of having it allowed him to realize the ideas that came to his mind. Again, the lack generated an effect contrary to its essence: the search for new resources to create.
Faber is twenty-seven years old, slim, one-seventy and wears a not very generous mustache over his lips. His skin is white and full of moles that are mixed with homemade tattoos, most of them handmade by himself with his own drawings: a green mountain, a black fish with legs, a red doll, an F, a circle inside another circle, a man made of lines and sticks. His hair is dark brown, he has an Ian Curtis style haircut. His eyes are a dark deep brown with long lashes, they gaze in an attentive and melancholic way. He has many ways of dressing, "sporty, wide, clingy", sometimes he wears tight black jeans, black Converse and a white T-shirt; other times, a vintage red woven jacket with yellow and green trim, but also sweatshirts, jackets and sports caps. The time I was most struck by his attire was at night, we had a meeting at Mistral, he arrived with a pair of black tweed pants with black checks, olive green vintage woven jacket with diamonds, a wide and long wine jacket, and a red knitted hat.
–
"Simulation" by Róisín Murphy started to play on the road, as we passed by the San Rafael reservoir. There was no room for silence, a constant beat accompanied us, no rest, no soft pauses, just a bit of euphoria in the atmosphere. We all laughed out loud. We told Rossina that the previous Friday we had gone dancing. I remembered that night two days before.
–
"Felina", one of Faber's favorite songs, was playing in a yellow room with low ceilings where only reggaeton could be heard. We were in Theatron -the iconic bar in Chapinero-, Faber was making moves with his arms and body seducing all of us, me and my friends, we were dancing closely but it was all just fun, like a moment of ecstasy. We spent most of the night there and danced to all the hits of a whole decade. "I'm leaving, Francis," Faber said at three in the morning. We all left behind him.
–
The process to create a close bond with Faber was long, it took us at least four meetings and many Facebook conversations to begin to feel trust. In the first portrait session, the one with Laura Aparicio, was when the ice was broken: the chats were more casual, even fun, the planning was no longer forced or choppy. I remember that after those photos we ate pizza at a place in Chapinero near her house, at that moment we were already friends.
–
I drove on to La Calera and showed Faber some quarries that I liked and had imagined might work as photo locations. "No, let's keep going," he said crisply and I obeyed. By this point I had learned to understand his language and way of saying no, bluntly.
The conversation with Rossina continued, she told us about her experience in Spokane while Gorillaz, with its soft sounds, accompanied her voice. We came to some short grassy mountains at the edge of the road and braked there. I left the car in an desolated driveway and started thinking about the first look.
The first thing I took out of the trunk was a red cotton robe with buttons down the front and a suit that Rossina had offered me from her closet while we were doing the dress fitting a few hours earlier. I changed her in the front chair; I put the robe on her and took the suit in a dress holder. I suggested we take Faber's cell phone to listen to music up there. He gave me a confused look but packed it. We crossed the track and then a fence, Faber nimbly passed it first and made room for Rossina and me, teasing me a bit about the situation. We climbed and climbed and climbed, neither of us panting with exhaustion, but Faber was looking for which of us would be the first to give up. On the left side was a fence and, in the lot beyond, a group of cows. Faber wanted to go there. I warned him that it could be dangerous, but he crossed over and made us follow him. Up there we found the place he imagined, got ready to start taking pictures. Faber took out his analog camera, an early 2000's Canon Rebel with a chrome coat of paint and an automatic overhead flash, and started shooting.
"Bleed Bleed Bleed Bleed" by Thieves Likes Us, a progressive song with a catchy bass, played as Faber directed Rossina. He put her on all fours, told her to dance, to move her hands as a light wind ruffled her robe. She would obey and Faber would look for the shot from above, lay down on the grass, reach over, arrange her arms and come back, pause and think for a few seconds only to continue.
"Crazy!", Rossina was thrilled with Britney, she would stretch out her index finger as she snapped her hip, her back was turned and Faber knew this was a key moment, he was looking for the angle and was amused by this new attitude of his muse. "That's it, go like this, turn around, move your hips." In the meantime I was watching out for a cow to ram Rossina; she was dressed in red.
When he got the shot, he stopped, let us know he was ready and we picked everything up. He took the cow path. "Oh, it's okay," he said. We took the path on the other side of the fence. A minute later he came back scared saying with nervous laughter that he was face to face with them. We went back to the car and saw the afternoon was beginning to fall, it was four o'clock and we had just enough time to take the remaining shots. We had barely started, but I wasn't worried, I already knew his working methods: he flows in his search for the shot, he knows what he wants and finds it quickly, he doesn't have complicated equipment, he doesn't make a very produced lighting setup, he works with the elements suggested by the situation.
–
Growing up in Manizales -a small city in the coffee zone- led him to look for new viewers through social networks, it prompted him to talk about himself through himself by means of his self-portraits. It was his way of saying "here I am”.
Also, spending so much time alone at home activated the search for his language right there, in his own space. Most of his photos have been taken at home, first in Manizales and now in his apartment in Bogota.
–
My first visit to her house was a bit awkward and short. "Are they here yet?" she wrote to me on Facebook. The appointment was at three in the afternoon and it was already ten past three. Faber is very accomplished. I was anxiously waiting for Sebastian, my reporter, at a coffee shop around the corner from his house in Chapinero. It was called la Tortica Italiana. I ordered more coffee and cake while I waited. "I'll be there in five," I replied. Sebastian arrived and we walked to Faber's street, we rang the doorbell and were greeted by two friends from Manizales who were hanging out in their house.
Techno was playing when they opened the door. Behind them Faber came out. "Quiubo, Que mas?". He offered us a beer and we accepted. We started talking, I had lots and lots of questions but Faber would cut them short, he would say, "Nothing else, I don't know, ask me," but without answering. He knows he is shy but he assumes it with grace, he wanted to tell me something but he was late.
She showed me her latest work: photos for Yuca, Exclama. She told me about her experience at Fucsia. Her room had a small bed with a pink bedspread, a large desk with an iMac (her most precious object), a printer with cartridges loaded with ink, family photos, found photos and some collected dolls, all the objects were singular.
In the other corner stood an easel with the latest painting in his "Bathers" series. "It's drying," she tells me, “painting takes its time." It was a diptych: a stout man in a pink bathing cap on a blue background next to a woman-also stout-with a light blue cap and gray background. Most of Faber's paintings are in pastel colors, he says it's because he somehow stayed in his comfort zone, but that his intention is to explore more with color and get out of the washed-out tonality. On the edge of the window lined his collection of enamels, mostly silver, with frost and iridescent glimpses, perhaps the sun damages them, but he doesn't care.
Figaro, the cat, shrieked as we walked through his house. "Fígaro!", Faber would claim to him with laughter, but he would not calm down. We continued talking, about his childhood, Manizales. "My childhood? Well... when I was born my mom died," he blurted out. She mimicked my worried face. I thought he didn't want to have asked that question, but he continued telling me, "So my stepmother raised me from a very young age. My dad is with my stepmom. My stepmom is my mom, but I call her my stepmom. Well... I lived with them all my life until I came here. I had a sister who also died, who was my biological mom and dad´s daughter, and I also have another sister, who is my stepmother's with my dad. My dad was cheating on my mom with my stepmom for seven years! And I have another brother who is my stepmother's son with another man”.
–
Faber's photographs are dark, in his words they are "darks", but not in the literal sense of the term: the shadows, tonalities and textures bring meaning and a breath of depth to every shot he takes. One of his favorite subjects now is the body. He portrays it sectioned, deformed, looks for new figures, uses it as sculpture. Faber sees it as an object with a multiplicity of associations, which allows him to create new things, as a universal tool of creation. Moreover, the self-portrait remains one of his favorite themes and a key sign in his work. When he portrays others, he somehow transfers a bit of himself to the shot, and this is reflected when they describe his work, they see him there, and without wanting to consciously show it, he feels that he does speak of who he is through his photos. Although they are not autobiographical, they do speak of internal processes that gradually come out in the form of various allegories represented in the lighting, shapes and color.
The arts empower him, they are a method to give him an outlet for his sensitivity. His shyness is an armor, but also a space for observation, silence it allows him to hear himself and have dialogue. This is why he is not in a fixed relationship, he gets tired of people. And those he is not tired of live far away. The contrast to his shyness is the humor that comes out in the form of mockery; it may seem black, but it has a bearable tone and is usually directed at himself.
His editing techniques are complex: first he takes the photo, prints it, draws, scans it, and even prints it again. "I like having ink because I can do things like that." At the moment of taking the shot, on the other hand, the process is more random, the moments are fortuitous, there is usually a very strong influence of the space he is in and the creation is synthesized when he is already in the place. "I start looking around me, what can I portray, for example in the editorial photos we did for Objectifs I went backwards and saw that the cable looked good, that it worked in that framing." To understand his way of perceiving the shot you have to turn to Cartier-Bresson's concept and the decisive moment, the moment when all the space comes together and generates a key instant. "I think that many times these things come together, they conspire on their own, it happens to me a lot with what I do, like there is coherence and I find things that I didn't think of before, and they come out on their own." This epiphany, which he thinks everyone finds in creative disciplines, he describes as a feeling that comes at the moment, but when he takes the picture it stops being ephemeral and remains fixed. However, it doesn't always work.
Now he has begun to create more complex conceptual structures and entire series with very specific themes. "Deriving contents", a series that mixes photography and drawing. It consists of diptychs that are composed of associations of images with drawings of shapes and lines. For example, the photograph of a woman in black and white on a sofa, facing a drawing of black and red lines that allude to the silhouette of her hands and head.
Back in the car Faber asked for the aux cord to connect the cell phone and again demanded "high volume." "What's the name of this one?" asked Rossina, "Pump it up!". Synthesizers play, it's dance music. "Pump, pump it up!", we all sang along. Then Kasper Bjorke came on and Rossina and Faber said it's one of their favorites, "Lose Yourself to Yenny" plays. I went back for it as I was writing. Synthesizers, a deep voice, a party beat. I wanted to dance to it.
–
In the distance we could see the valley and we thought of stopping, but Faber got off quickly and deduced that it was impossible to cross the fence. We passed the toll and arrived at an ideal place: ten kilometers of plain, green grass, fresh, humid, in the background the mountains that separated us from Bogota. It was easy to cross the fence.
Rossina laughed as she changed in the open air. First she put on leather pants with a black turtleneck. She danced, curled up, posed with a deep expression, put her hands out from between the green iridescent coat I had draped over her shoulders, made different shapes with her hands, pointed, this time with all her fingers, and the sun was setting between the mountains.
"This Must Be The Place" was playing, it was a little cold, but the sky was clear, a few clouds were forming on the horizon, they were white, soft and looked like brushstrokes, the soil was very fertile and you could see streams being born in the cracks of that immense terrain.
–
Faber looks for people with rare beauty to portray. He also experiments with lighting because he doesn't know much about flashes. Again the lack makes him try. He uses other lights or effects to find ways to show what he wants without the need for flash, for example a colored lamp that emits a red, blue or yellow light. Color is the most important thing for him, it's what makes a good photograph. And this is what he most admires about one of his favorite photographers, Harley Weir. Until recently he started working more in analog, since he has a scanner. "I like the colors it gives", deeper and more textured." For him it has nothing to do with the nostalgia of the photographic roll, of going back to that technique, but more with the look and what the film brings aesthetically.
La usurpadora and María, la del barrio are two of his favorite telenovelas. He sees them to relive moments from his childhood, for him they are beautiful and the drama they have makes him think about how utopian life is, where these novel and disproportionate realities do not seem so distant.
It was time to dress Rossina in the white suit with printed black flowers, the one Faber liked the least. Destiny's Child sang "Bills, bills, bills." "Well, in the end I do like it. Come on over here Rossi, get over here." Rossina was standing on unstable ground, small logs making it difficult for her to balance. "Put your leg up and grab the tree," she did everything he asked her to do. Faber always does the opposite of what I imagine: he turns everything upside down and creates from something I hadn't seen. Working with him is a process full of unforeseen events, there are always surprises, but they are always good. He arrives with his ideas and let´s them flow. In the process I have learned to let myself be carried away by his methods, I surrender control without resistance because I find no reason.
–
A great photograph can give voice to the unspoken. A material, a range of colors, the textures of the floor or wall can communicate what Faber cannot find in words. Photography was the first way he found to speak of what does not exist in essence but does exist in his imagination. He confesses that if he had found painting or installation before, he would have used them also to communicate. For him they are media that also makes it possible to give a language to those feelings which have taken him to the process of getting to know and mastering them. Photography, on the other hand, takes it to the limit, the exploration is evident and there is no room for the safe or the traditional rules. "It is the medium that came first and that is why it is my medium”.
–
Ivory closed the evening with "Movement". There was still one dress option left for Rossina, but Faber didn't want to wear it. The sun had already gone down, only the vague reflection remained behind the clouds, which were starting to get thicker and knotted behind the mountains that stretched in the background and separated us from the city. We finished with satisfaction, there was an air of tranquility. A soft bass accompanied an improvised guitar solo, a pleading voice sang of someone's absence.
–
Faber makes a distinction between painting and photography: he says that painting is deeper and photography, although it is more personal, feels superficial; he says that he has not yet internalized it completely, like people usually do with painting. And although he started painting in 2014 and has found it hard to get into the habit. He says that when he paints something comes out of himself, he gives himself more to the moment, sometimes tears of happiness.
–
On the way back to Bogotá, Nicolas Jaar's "Flashy, flashy" was playing. The song made me think of Faber's sexuality, which he subtly projects through the themes of his paintings or the way he dances. It is certainly present in his work such as the self-portrait in which he is almost naked, lying on the bed in fragments printed on white sheets, or in the abstract ceramic of a woman masturbating that he made for a sculpture class. One day he told me that he kissed four men in one night. "I love kissing," he told me.
Halfway through we stopped for a hot drink and dessert. A downpour fell that we never saw coming, fortunately it did not fall earlier. By the time we got back to the car it was already dark, we were all a bit tired and talking less. “Vessels" a remix of Echo In was playing.
"Battle Scars" accompanied the arrival to Bogota. Only white lights and red bulbs could be seen in the middle of the streets that were a bit empty after a rainy night. We drove down 76th street to drop Rossina off and excitedly said our goodbyes, Faber moved to the front seat. We agreed that the day was amazing, that Rossina is amazing.
And in the last few blocks, Adriatique sent Faber off with a dj set: already at home, in his neighbourhood, he got off the car with his red plaid jacket on, grabbed his gear, gave me a kiss and a hug. "We'll talk, Francis” and closed the door.