De camino

By Mariana S. Belaval Madera

Mariana S. Belaval, born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, is a photographer, filmmaker and writer currently based in Chicago, Illinois. She is in her third year of college, for a degree in Film Direction with a minor in Philosophy.  Her photography is united by the need of expressing and the fear of being forgotten.  The thematics of home, identity, the human condition, sex and femininity, are constantly presented and deconstructed in her work. And it is juxtaposing ideas such as these, which define a majority of Puryear’s work. The constant contention between fluid and concrete, worldly and ethereal, austere and indulgent, lends each piece a noticeably vibrant essence that can only come from melding such opposing ideologies. By subscribing to a multitude of thoughts and emotions, be they conflicting, his work is prevented from becoming stagnant, culminating instead in a lush canvas blooming with vitality.