l'amistad es un jardín / friendship is a garden

l’amistad es un jardín friendship is a garden

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- friendship is a garden
-what do plants
-and people need to bloom?
-we can take each other’s energy and pass it around.
-when you inhale, i exhale. turn it into oxygen.
-we find the sunshine and the light that we need to survive.
-creating our space and
our home with our friends -
our family.
-being vulnerable for each other
we can be truly ourselves.
-we are growing ever upwards.
-together as a garden.
-tending a space.
-cultivating a family.

This project is an ongoing project collaboration with MJ Lebrón - together we are luna y lebrón. We are partners in plants and in dirt and in life. This project explores a cross-imagining between nature and bodies. It is a love letter to the way that domesticated nature still grows wild, the way that our bodies, our Queer bodies, house us and interact with our surroundings. The book for the first part of this project, photographed and edited in Brooklyn between 2018-2019, was printed using sustainable printing method by Rolling Press in Brooklyn.

When we moved into a new space in Brooklyn in May 2018, friends gave us plants as housewarming gifts. We ended up photographing each other and our friends with the plants, using a film camera. This led us to start exploring how growing a garden shares similarities with cultivating our community. Taking the photos together as a team is very important to us, and making sure everyone felt comfortable, creative, and safe was extremely important as well. With respect and love for everyone's relationships with their own bodies, each participant chose their level of undress. The process of the photoshoot usually began with the two of us cooking for our friends in our apartment, sharing a meal, enjoying sunshine and plants and cats. It is an exploration of comfort within our home, intimacy between friends and intimate spaces, and the blurred bond between friends and chosen family.