Valeria Duque
I recently discovered the work of Valeria Duque, a Colombian photographer based in Medellín, who built her career in fashion and portraiture, where everything is about control. Embroidery gave her the opposite.
A self-described perfectionist, she took up the needle to make something without having to do it well, and it became a kind of therapy.
During the 2020 quarantine she began stitching by hand directly into her own prints, which became the series “Paper, thread, scissors.”
The process is slow and permanent, because every hole in the paper stays. Each piece is an image made twice: once in an instant, and once by hand.
I especially love seeing the reverse, which shows the beauty of process and happy accidents.
