Artist Talk with Angela Cappetta: Gloria Salgado Gispert, Photographer

Artist Talk with Angela Cappetta, Location Photographer: Gloria Salgado Gispert is Today's Subject.

Interview with Gloria Salgado Gispert by NYC documentary-style photographer Angela Cappetta

Artist Talks with Angela Cappetta who is an NYC documentary-style photographer. Today, we do a deep dive with Gloria Salgado Gispert, a documentary-style photographer. She and her family have just moved to Nice, France. As in, moved this week. So, just now moved. Gloria kindly took time out of relocating to her fourth (fifth?) country to be interviewed for my blog today.We appreciate Gloria's mission. She seems to take pictures wherever she lands. Her work has a wonderful, voyeuristic quality. This fascination with street theater makes it hard to look away. Gloria leans into an honest sort of cacophony in her work. The ability to snap at the right moment is not easy. Although, she makes it look easy. To enumerate, here are the five (5) questions I asked her. This is what she has to say.

Q: So, what is a day shooting like for you?

A: I have my family, my job, and my photography. Shooting falls somewhere in between. Somehow, I’ve managed to integrate my photography into our everyday. My camera is inside my purse.  I use it every time something grabs my attention. This can happen while I wait for one of my kids at school. Or, it can happen on a walk to the market. That said, I don’t plan my photography in advance.

Q: You seem to be making very specific decisions in your projects in terms of editing and sequence. Care to share what is your proofing and editing process like?

A: To go with the flow means to take many pictures in a chaotic way.To enumerate: in one day,

• I may photograph my teens at home.
• Shoot us walking the dog on the beach.
• Or, driving the car after dinner because I’ve decided to start a new series photographing bus stops at night.

The truth is I love the process more than the outcomes I may get.

As a result, I end up taking so many pictures that at some point I feel like I need to slow down and think about what I am trying to do. I call it “Gloria stop”.  [LOL]. This is where my editing process begins. Editing does not necessarily mean that I will go through the pictures I took during the month. Moreover, it means that I sit down in front of the big screen and think. Occasionally,  with a clear idea in mind. Often, simply browsing through the archive. I wish I had the time to print everything, hang them on the wall, look.  Ideally, I'd love to shuffle them around and go for portfolio reviews, but I simply can’t find the time. 

Q: Your projects encompass a long breadth. For example, Childhood Memories tells a vastly different from It Had to Be That Way. Can you tell us about how you arrive at a project theme and how you develop it?

A: Of course, I have project themes in mind while I’m photographing. Maybe it makes more sense to say that my every day translates into project themes.For the project “Childhood memories” I spent years taking those pictures and storing them in a folder without knowing why. You will probably not believe me, but the truth is that I produced the whole series in an afternoon when something “clicked” inside my brain. Those were my memory frames and it all made sense the moment it crossed my mind to combine them in the form of triptychs. The first draft was the final series, I never changed anything and from that day on I stopped taking that kind of picture.The series “It had to be that way” comes from a quick visit to New York City when my partner and I decided to go back to celebrate our 25th anniversary. I got accepted to a workshop with Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris and we spent a week walking the city, visiting old friends, getting wet under the rain, and enjoying life as a couple. I consider myself very lucky that my family accepts my photography obsession and that we have been able to integrate my camera into our lives.All my series and projects are a tiny part of our diary: “Summer down under” mirrors our summer walks on the beach close to our house, “To the fools who dream” those unnoticeable moments, the real ballet magic that happens backstage while my two daughters and many other ballerinas are performing, “Life pieces” encompasses details about our every day I don’t want to miss, and “In the city where nobody lives” not many things happen, but the harsh Australian light makes ordinary scenes extraordinary.

Q: Do you shoot one body of work at a time or several going at once? (Artist Talk with Angela Cappetta)

Q: I have two cameras, one stays at home and one in my purse and I charge the batteries for both of them every night. My editing time starts after dinner, although I am already thinking about it when someone at the table says “You are already there, mum, go for it.” Once in front of the screen, I download the content of both memory cards in different collections. Yes, I would say I shoot several bodies of work at once.

Q: Lastly, you just arrived in France via Western Australia, Barcelona, and New York before that. How does this happen with a family in tow?

A: Our jobs offer us the opportunity to travel the world and we take it. A passion for living is now instilled in our children. I am answering your questions during my fourth day in Nice (France), a bit jet-lagged sitting in a very cozy Airbnb in the old city before we move to our empty apartment. We just arrived from the summer in Western Australia, one of the only places in the entire world with no COVID, right into the winter with COVID. All of us are excited and happy: new schools, a new language, new photography projects. We are an easy-going, positive family by nature. As my family allows things to unfold I photograph them as they do. 

Artist Talk with Angela Cappetta