Rubén Ríos Herrera, 27. Milwaukee.

Motorsports enthusiast fueled by espresso and romanticism.

Years ago, prior to making this website, I had an Instagram account in which I would frequently post pictures of my Miata and snapshots of the adventures I would take with it: night time car meets in the rain, outings with friends, cruises on backroads, the sort. I did this both as a creative outlet and as a journal of my ownership with the car. The routine was typically

1. Go on the journey.

2. Take some pictures that emulated the feel and spontaneity of ‘80s Polaroid Supercolor shots.

3. Go home and edit the shots to emulate the spirit of imperfect and textured but evocative mediums of yesteryear.

4. Post it accompanied by the exact song that the images evoked, typically something in the Eurodisco or vaporwave families.

Rinse and repeat, and it was extremely satisfying.

The issue that I had was with the platform itself. Like many young men, I had allowed the Instagram algorithm to tailor itself perfectly to my interests and found myself wasting hours mindlessly scrolling. At one point I even foolishly proclaimed to my friends, “See! I have conquered the algorithm, it is only showing me exactly what I want to see!”, like a fish claiming victory over the fisherman because it was offered the exact bait it preferred. A slave boasting of his chains. The medium had trapped the artist.

My escape was through a program called Exodus 90, a program that combines asceticism, prayer, and fraternity to discipline the soul and body by stripping away all distractions. It was initially difficult to let go, but deleting the app and all other social media was one of the best things I have done. Gone were the distractions, the noise, and needless stress that surrounded that creative outlet that I cherished. Exodus 90 helped me step out of the digital machine and into a grounded, more physical reality. Years later, I pulled the trigger on a 1982 Nikon F3, and this entire site is a fruit of that.

This site is a gallery of light captured on silver halide grains, film photography practiced simply as a discipline of attention and memory. Here you will find no aspirations of commercial or algorithmic success. Unless otherwise indicated, all frames were exposed on that same well-loved Nikon F3.

“There is no reality which is not symbolic. The nature of our existence in the world is symbolic. Events coalesce around centers of meaning, through our Attention and our Memory. We all experience this constantly, and if one is attentive, what it does is: It makes the world a magical place.”— Jonathan Pageau