Sofie Vasquez

Dawoud Bey has said, “I make the work that I do in order to visualize the things that are important to me, and to make them matter to someone else.” If that’s one of the goals a photographer and artist should aspire to then Sofie Vasquez has succeeded tremendously with her compelling documentation of the indie wrestling scene. The wrestlers in this subculture are hugely passionate about wrestling, and Sofie matches their passion and commitment with documentation that captures not only the energy, blood, sweat, and tears of the wrestling matches, but also the excitement and interaction of the wrestlers with the fans, and, in some of my favorite photos in this body of work, the quiet, casual, and just plain fun behind-the-scenes moments that really help to humanize these stars, heroes, and villains of the wrestling ring. These are folks with big personalities, and Sofie’s images put those personalities and people on film with great love and respect.

I asked Sofie to tell us about her journey in photography, and how she got involved in documenting the wrestling scene:

Ironically enough, I wanted to be a filmmaker as a kid. My father was a film student in college when I was a toddler so I remember growing up surrounded by his books about cinema and always going to Whitestone Cinemas in the Bronx. So in my senior year of high school, I took video production and studied film history when suddenly, I found myself enjoying taking pictures instead of filming on the Canon camera we had for class. It was so addicting that I checked out the camera without permission every Friday to take it to concerts I was attending on the weekend - alongside video, I also had goals in becoming a music journalist so I would find my way into The Studio at Webster Hall or the Knitting Factory, and ask the booked photographers there if they had a moment to show me how to operate the camera.

And from there, that’s where the explosion of photography happened - it began with me exploring specific subcultures and discovering the photographers of their respective scenes. CJ Harvey, a film photographer from Pennsylvania who toured with my favorite indie bands, was my first favorite photographer before I knew who “the greats” were. Their work was my first introduction to documentary photography - to have a body of work following people who fascinated and inspired you. And at seventeen to nineteen, I had my sights set on being a music photographer because I loved music and the culture, so I started taking photography classes in community college and this is kind of where everything began to fall into place. I took Intro to Documentary, Narrative, and Photojournalism in my second year of community college (Thank you Prof. Towery) and I simultaneously began taking black and white film photography classes at ICP at The Point - I always credit and thank the community for teaching my photography. The community of music photographers who gave a dumb seventeen year old’s ramblings a chance of day, the teachers and teaching assistants pushed me when I got comfortable, and even the community of photographers who are my friends and colleagues today. Actively, we root for each other and lend aid, assistance, or just creative ramblings for us photographers.

I’ve been a wrestling fan since I was a kid. Ohioan wrestler Dean Ambrose was my hero. I once broke my arm trying to do an elbow drop, and at sixteen, there was a genuine interest in becoming a wrestler if I had found the right school. Wrestling is a chaotic and insane subculture that holds a sincerity to me, the same way it has for not only the wrestlers but for anyone who was once a wrestling fan. Since 2018, I have been a photographer in independent professional wrestling. At 19, I found it in a gym in the South Bronx, a mere 15 minutes from my home. From 2020 till 2021, I traveled with wrestlers across state lines to document their hustle, sacrifice, and commitment to this industry. It all began with my grandparents driving me to Atlantic City to go witness a wrestling death match by the beach. Then I went back on a coastal city bus, and soon those seats were replaced for cramped back seats in tiny packed cars going hundreds of miles out into the Midwest.

The life of an indie wrestler equates to that of a rock'n'roll star on tour, minus the unlimited budget provided by a record label. If you started training early, like most at 16, this is all you know and because this is all you’ve known, you’re willing to sacrifice everything for it. I’ve seen men without insurance collide their scarred bodies against light tubes, barbed wire, and doors on fire. I’ve been on 12 hour plus car rides for a one night only gig that could be a make it or break it opportunity. I’ve seen broke men, women, and non-binary athletes been stiffed on pay after they broke their bodies out in the ring. Yet, despite the shortcomings that would follow around anyone who is in pursuit of their dreams, I’ve been moved to tears by a crowd’s roar when a wrestler walks through that curtain. State to state, I've traveled with them with the intent to not only document their adventures to capture the friendships, the Americana, the glamor, and the hard work. All of the layers of professional wrestling that are wrapped into the lives of people I’ve deemed not only as my friends but as my biggest inspiration. I’ve tentatively dubbed this body of work Almost Famous: An Indie Wrestling Diary, and it completes a deep but intimate, understanding portrayal of indie wrestling and those involved in its world.

2022 is a full circle moment - I’m making a film about wrestling. The photographer finally learns how to film and edit like how I had anticipated all those moons ago but I’m superstitious and believe in perfect timing. I had to fall in love with photography first to truly enjoy, understand, question, study, and accept filmmaking, they’re not that far apart. They’re practically siblings. And because I like to overwork, I’m working on a book. Also about wrestling. Consider it the perfect bow to a long-term project - I’m not leaving wrestling but I want this hard work chronicled in a tangible body of art I can share with everyone. There are other projects - I’m thinking roller derby, boxing, demolition derby, and horror conventions - I want to sink my teeth into, in 2022.

My genuine advice to a photographer is - fall in love with the process. Trust your gut, trust your story, trust yourself and your vision and your choices, and whatever path you take in photography - whether it be journalism, editorial, experimental, documentary, fine art, or just a little mix of the in-between - always find yourself wanting to do it all over again. Breaks are ok, remember that burnout is very real and you taking a pause to step away or even step out of your comfort zone is going to be the best decision for yourself and even your art. Believe in what you’re doing, but also leave some room to learn. Photography is still pretty young alongside the other mediums of art - make a cyanotype, be vulnerable in front of the lens and take self-portraits, try a point-and-shoot or a 4x5 camera, take a continuing ed or after school class if you can afford it.

I once overworked myself so much I didn’t touch my camera until I had gigs. And sure, I did the work, and I had fun. But it was temporary and felt stale - I had to say “fuck it”, buy a roll of film and take my film camera on my errand run and just shoot what I saw and what I liked. Not for a long-term story or project, it doesn’t always have to be project-oriented or for an assignment, don’t forget to shoot for yourself.

Follow Sofie Vasquez on Instagram: @bullsinthebrnx, and check out her other bodies of work on her website here.

Pre-order a copy of her 2021 wrestling zine Estoy En Mi Peak here.

Photo at top of post: Self Portrait, in quarantine, 2020. © Sofie Vasquez

↓ ↓ ↓ All Photos in this post © Sofie Vasquez ↓ ↓ ↓

Brooklyn native Big Game Leroy makes his debut in San Antonio, Texas, 2021. © Sofie Vasquez

Brooke Valentine at her Mania Week debut in Tampa, Florida, 2021. © Sofie Vasquez

Holidead defeats Kaia McKenna at the Voltage Lounge in a 24 hour wrestling show, 2021. © Sofie Vasquez

Canadian wrestler Jody Threat at the Amvet Hall in Yarmouth, Maine for Limitless Wrestling, 2021. © Sofie Vasquez

MV Young in Texas, at Heavy Metal Wrestling, 2021. © Sofie Vasquez

Weber Hatfield and Big Dan have an 80s montage moment in a barn in Pennsylvania, 2021. © Sofie Vasquez

PB Smooth and Dominic at Enjoy Wrestling, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 2022 © Sofie Vasquez

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Sofie Vasquez (1998) is an Ecuadorian documentary photographer born and raised in the Bronx, New York. Her artwork explores the communities within subcultures through a personal perspective and has been featured in The New York Times, exhibited at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Bronx Documentary Center, the Ecuadorian-American Cultural Center, The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center, the Shirley Fiterman Art Center, the DGT Alumni Association Gallery House, Photoville and En Foco Inc.

Sofie is an alumnus of the International Center of Photography's Community Fellows, and is a part of the first graduating class of the fellowship, 2018-2020. She was a student at The City College of New York until the COVID-19 pandemic forced her to pause her studies. She is currently a Bronx Documentary Center Films Fellow and a freelance traveling documentary photographer.

Website: sofievasquez.squarespace.com Instagram: @bullsinthebrnx

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Samantha Box

Samantha Box is a photographer whose lush and layered work intrigued me and drew me in as soon as I encountered it. I was reminded of something photographer Alejandro Cartagena said in Sasha Wolf’s great book Photo Work:

“I think in layers. The more layers a project has, the more possibility there is that one of those layers will relate to someone. Something like this: The project needs to be aesthetically, technically, conceptually, and historically relevant; have a personal connection, pull toward some kind of social commentary, be able to show personal and artistic vulnerability; and so on.”

Looking at Samantha’s work, I say to myself, “yes yes yes yes ” because her images are so beautifully answering Cartagena’s wishlist. What also struck me about her work, particularly in her Caribbean Dreams - Constructions series is the way the photographs break open a historical form in a relevant way not simply as critique, but to enlarge it and make the form more expansive. Samantha’s images remind us that the real power of artists is to see the world not simply in categories and niches, but in all its complexity and creativity and beauty and pain and sadness and possibility and all the places and possibilities in between. I asked Samantha to tell me a little more about her work and thoughts on photography:

Tell me about your work

The main idea that undergirds my work is an articulation of the ways in which identity – and by extension, community, networks of care and survival, ideas of home and belonging – are formed within spaces of sociopolitical and physical liminality such as Blackness, queerness and diaspora.

I love full images where all parts of the frame are actively being used, an image that carries a satisfying sense of lushness and tension.


How has your work helped to shape the photos you make?

I’m really fortunate in that most of my work that I’ve engaged in to support my photography has informed my work. For example, for much of “The Shelter, The Street”, I was working at Contact Press Images. I spent a lot of time working with, and learning from, amazing photographs, and this translated directly into my work at Sylvia’s Place. 

After, I began teaching photography to at-risk queer and TGNB youth of color at the same time that I began to make the images that comprise “The Last Battle.” Some of the young people that I photographed at Kiki ballroom functions were also my students. It was my students’ work – and community documentation made by the wider Kiki scene - that prompted me to confront the limitations of documentary practice: among them, who has the authority to create a narrative of a community? In other words, I realized that the Kiki Scene was expertly doing the work of documentation already, and so, I decided to take a step back, which partly informed my decision to go to graduate school.

I still support myself through teaching. Researching, editing, and presenting work for in-class lectures – with an emphasis on destabilizing the historical and contemporary white/European/American/male canon - means that I look at work made by a wide range of people, working in a wide range of styles/practices. Regarding my practice, it means encountering work that inspires, summons indifference, or sometimes repulses. This means that I’m constantly thinking of where my work stands, how it’s in conversation with other photographer’s work, thoughts, and practices. All of this shapes my work.


Is there a photo book that’s held a lot of significance for you as a photographer?  

Milton Rogovin’s “Triptychs: Buffalo’s Lower West Side Revisited”  is a book – and series - that had a profound impact on me when I first saw it; the same is true of the next (unpublished) iteration of this work, which is a series of quadtychs. This work presented a way of working with a community over time - of making quiet, nuanced, thoughtful and collaborative pictures - that I was hungry for when I encountered it in 2005, and which, at that time, was vanishingly rare. Whenever I think about the arcs of the lives in these multi-part images – the births, deaths, connections, estrangements, generations - I am deeply moved. 


Is there anything you’ve had to ‘unlearn’ about photography to make the artworks you now make?

Apart from composition, exposure and lighting, I’m actively trying to unlearn everything. 


What advice would you offer to others who see your work and want to get into photography?

The image comes first, not the camera, analog/digital, social media. Work at images that are singularly, visually your own. Share this work with people whose work you respect, and who you can trust with your mistakes and questions. Grow together and support each other!


Has the pandemic influenced your work?

From the early days of our current moment, I realized that the only thing that I could count on was my work. I have learned to trust myself, to follow my ideas, and to give myself a wide berth for experimentation and iteration. 


Looking ahead, what are some goals or hopes for your own work in the years to come?

In the next year, I am determined to solidify my studio practice, and to resolve this sense of disconnection between the different bodies of work that make up Caribbean Dreams. I’d also like to start thinking of the best way to archive all of my INVISIBLE work.


Lastly, we’d love to know about what’s happening with your art practice right now? Where, besides the web, might people encounter your work?

My work is currently in a number of places: Subject-Object at St. Lawrence University (until 2/26), Eco-Urgency: Now or Never Part ll at Lehman College Art Gallery (until 4/23), and Picturing Black Girlhood: Moments of Possibility at Express Newark (until 7/6). A portrait of artist Zachary Fabri – part of Beyond the Flat, a collaboration conceived of by artist and activist Ted Kerr – will be shared at Zachary’s performance at Weeksville on 3/19. And, I will be having a solo show at Light Work in the Fall! 

Follow Samantha Box to see more and stay up to date!

Photo at top of post: Construction #6, 2019 © Samantha Box

↓ ↓ ↓ All Photos in this post © Samantha Box (@samantha.box) ↓ ↓ ↓

Construction #1(3), 2018 © Samantha Box

An Origin, 2020 © Samantha Box

Multiple #3, 2019 © Samantha Box

Realness, The Miami to New York Ball, November 2013 © Samantha Box

Face, The This is It Ball, April 2014 © Samantha Box

Team Performance, The Marciano Ball, October 2015 © Samantha Box

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