Meet Maximo Borisonik | Photographer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Maximo Borisonik and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Maximo, we’d love to hear more about your end-goal, professionally.
It’s funny to think about the end when I feel like I’ve barely broke the surface of the beginning. Thinking about the end makes me reflect on the beginning and the changes that have brought me into my now eighth year of making photographs. The end goal becomes clearer with progression, but muddled all the same. Do I want to survive on it? Do I want to be in the papers? on the red carpet? Do I want to be academic? Do I want my work in museums, to be considered as part of that official “cannon” of photography’s history? All of these thoughts confuse it as much as they provide guidance towards next steps.

I think I measure the success of the art as an access. A type of freedom that is born from experience, of making connections, earning respect. I want to be trusted to approach an assignment or invited to create a body of photographs and know my approach won’t be diluted or scrapped. A successful career is one of immense diversity in its exploration.

The more I ruminate on it the more I think that the only end to my career is Mother Nature itself forcing me into a permanent retirement and even then, I’d like to photograph my last breath if I can still hit the shutter.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I like the unexpected. I think my strongest photographs rely on the surprise of either the moment itself or a photograph’s outcome. It’s one of the elements that keep me using analog as my medium rather than digital. I don’t want to get something perfect for the sake of perfection, I like that risk. I need the photography to feel wonderful. I want to connect or reconnect, to find acquaintance with my subject matter. I want to recognize something in strangers and forge a bond with them through the work. The constant is that unexpectedness that makes it feel like destiny.

Right now I’m working on my a long term project which centers around my dad’s upbringing in Buenos Aires and my disconnection from that part of myself. Argentina as a whole is somewhere I’d only really known in detail as the setting of stories or otherwise a place born of my imagination. Using the camera to talk with people and explore lets me try to find that something thats felt absent my whole life, it lets me exercise that frustration I have every time I try to speak spanish. The photography is becoming the utilization of the skills and elements I’ve honed, this suspense of reality and expectation approach, to find understanding; to find familiarity. I plan on doing the same with Detroit, where my mom was raised, and with Los Angeles; to reacquaint myself with the places from mine and my family’s past. I’m very interested in following the through-line of my familial roots, I have no idea how far back it will take me.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
My favorite spots in New York City are more general places to explore, Jackson Heights. Walking the stretch of 10th avenue north until it turns into Amsterdam and that turns into Fort George. Riverside Park. The patch of grass beneath the tree beside the Picnic House in Prospect Park. I’d go to the Insectarium at the Natural History Museum. The Brooklyn Museum. I’d take them to Ugly Baby for the best Thai food in the city.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
This dedication is to my friends. There have been so many over the years who have given me advice, lended an eye or an ear to help me sharpen the vision I continue to work on. Thank you.

Website: https://www.maximoborisonik.com/

Instagram: maximoborisonik