Every August we ask the previous Top 25 Lenscratch Student Prize Winners to interview a hero or a mentor, offering an opportunity for conversation and connection. Today Anastasia Sierra and Ana Casa Broda are in dialogue. Thank you to both of the artists.

I can’t remember where I first saw the work of Ana Casas Broda, but I remember the image: a woman on the floor, naked, partly buried in toilet paper; her two young children frantically finishing the mummification. The room is dark and bare. The woman’s body doesn’t belong to her. There is a sense of claustrophobia, suspended between captivity and surrender – something I also return to in my own work about motherhood.

Last year, as I started putting my project into book form, I came across Ana’s book Kinderwunsch. Experiencing the book felt like entering someone else’s consciousness and finding reflections of my own. Bodies, nakedness, memories, desires; soft skin and sweet little hands tugging, squeezing, reaching; needles, scars, and hospital beds; play, exhaustion, time — all in the same dark rooms, year after year.

Spanning decades, Ana Casas Broda’s photographic practice explores the intertwined relationships between family, memory, motherhood, and the body — questions that are also central to my work. I was honored to speak with Ana about her evolving relationship with photography, the complexities of making work about motherhood, the photobook as a form, publishing in Latin America, and Hydra, the photobook workshop and publishing space she co-directs in Mexico City.

Ana Casas Broda (Spain, 1965) is a photographer based in Mexico whose practice explores identity, memory, family, and the relationship between personal experience and the photographic medium. She is the author of Álbum (Mestizo, 2000) and Kinderwunsch (La Fábrica, 2014), which received the Award for Best Edited Art Book of 2014 from Spain’s Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports and was nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize in 2015. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including solo exhibitions at PhotoEspaña, Fotohof Austria, Bozar Brussels, and museums throughout Mexico.

Since 2012, Casas Broda has co-directed HYDRA, a photography platform in Mexico City dedicated to education, dialogue, collaboration, and photobook publishing. Through HYDRA, she organizes the Photobook Incubator, a long-term educational program supporting photographers in the development of their books with international editors, designers, and curators. HYDRA Publishing has produced more than forty photobooks by Latin American photographers, expanding possibilities for photobook production through collaborative and experimental approaches.

Instagram: @anacasasbroda 

Anastasia Sierra: Was there a single moment that you remember that sparked your desire to work in photography? What does photography give you over other media? 

Were there photographers, writers, filmmakers, or artists who shaped your vision?

Ana Casas Broda: I was born in Granada, Spain, to an Andalusian father and a Viennese mother. I spent my early years between Vienna and Spain, where my parents went through various stages of a complicated relationship that never really worked out. We lived in Vienna, Valencia, Madrid, and New York, until my mother finally moved to Mexico to pursue her research in Aztec religion, leaving me alone with my father for two years, with nothing but the longing to go with her. Finally, at the age of nine, I was able to come to Mexico, where I’ve spent almost my entire life.

As an only child living alone with my mother—an academic who was very closed off from the rest of the media—I was forbidden from watching television or even listening to the radio. So, I spent my afternoons reading and drawing. Painting, installation art, and literature played a very important role in my life.

When I started college, I decided to major in visual arts. Little by little, I lost my enjoyment of painting, but I became passionate about art history. I enrolled in a photography school. Very soon, photography captivated me deeply, and I became obsessed with it. I spent every hour I could taking photos or in the darkroom.

From a very young age, I went to an art house cinema every week. I was fascinated by Tarkovsky, Bergman, and many other filmmakers. Painting and literature held a very special place in my life. I was fascinated by Egon Schiele, Gustav Klint, Kokoschka, Francis Bacon, Mark Rothko, Soutine, Picasso, the Abstract Expressionists, the Austrian Actionists, Christian Boltanski, Annette Messager, Louise Bourgeois, Dieter Appelt, Joseph Beuys, among many other radical artists. I read novels all the time; I was particularly captivated by Paul Auster, Milan Kundera, Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, Raymond Carver, and the Beat Generation—including Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, and Henry Miller—among so many others. At photography school, I was inspired by Robert Mapplethorpe, Duane Michals, Nan Goldin, Josef Koudelka, Sally Mann, Cartier-Bresson, Jo Spence, Hanna Wilke, among many others.

Anastasia Sierra: Early in your career you worked as an assistant to Manuel Álvarez Bravo. What did you learn from him, and how did that experience influence your approach to photography?

Ana Casas Broda: Actually, my fascination with photography began before Don Manuel came to my photography school looking for an assistant. They recommended me because I was the most dedicated and passionate student. 

I’d pick up Don Manuel in the mornings in my blue Beetle and drive him to a house that the Televisa Foundation had made available to him so he could begin building the collection with his donations, which has since become the largest photography collection in Mexico. My first day on the job was Don Manuel’s birthday, and when I arrived at the office, we were surprised by Koudelka, his wife Jill Hartley, and Diego Rivera’s grandson, who were playing “Las Mañanitas” on a jarana. I couldn’t believe I’d just met Koudelka. After work, they invited me to Don Manuel’s house, and we danced. I danced with Koudelka. 

For a while, I spent my time organizing the wonderful prints by great photographers who had given their works to Don Manuel: Cartier-Bresson, Koudelka, André Kertész, Regner Patsch and many others I no longer remember. However, my passion for taking photos soon led me to leave so I could devote myself entirely to photography. 

Anastasia Sierra: Was photographing yourself and your experiences something you were always interested in, or was it something you arrived at gradually? 

Ana Casas Broda: From the very beginning, I came to realize that I needed to explore my own identity through photography—first as an inner urge, and gradually as a conscious decision to choose first-person narrative to delve into universal themes, knowing that the deeper I could explore my own experience and my connection with others, the more I would be able to articulate the themes that connect us all as human beings—themes that create echoes which invite reflection on aspects of reality hidden in the deepest layers of our experiences.

In 1988, on a trip to Vienna, I began my series of photographs featuring my grandmother, my mother, and my sister. The photos my grandmother had taken of me as a child had always held a deep fascination for me; I would lose myself in the albums as if they had hidden a key to a vital mystery. My grandmother took photos of me from childhood onward, serving as both my accomplice and witness. She gave me her 6×6 Ikoflex camera, which she had used for 50 years. I began taking photos in the very same places where she had photographed me as a child—in the garden of her home in Vienna, among the overflowing plants.

I moved to Vienna to continue my photo work and be close to my grandmother. That’s how I immersed myself in the series I worked on for fourteen years, which resulted in the book Álbum, published in 2000 by the Spanish publisher Mestizo.

I spent over a year at my grandmother’s house in Vienna, and then I moved to Madrid, where I worked at the Círculo de Bellas Artes helping to organize international workshops and set up exhibitions, which allowed me to get to know most of the Spanish photography scene. I also met many artists in Vienna’s photography and art scene. I took workshops with Heinz Cibulka—a student, model, and photographer associated with the Austrian Actionists—as well as Joseph Weiss, Michaela Moscouw, Peter Dressler, and many other incredible artists.

I regularly traveled to Vienna to take care of my grandmother and continue working on my photo series with her. On one of my trips, my grandmother let me take a portrait of her bare torso, revealing her single breast and the scar from the one that had been removed when she was fifty. That experience had a profound impact on her life and her relationship with my mother, who was eight years old at the time. Something very deep opened up between us.

A few months later, they found a lump in her other breast, and I was with her throughout the entire process—the doctor’s visits, the surgery. I took care of her, applied ointment to her wound, and we took photos at the hospital and when we got back home.

One day I asked her to take a self-portrait with me. I set up the cinema lights I always use, mounted the Ikoflex on the tripod, placed the shutter release cable under my foot, and took a photo; then I’d run over to turn the camera dial for the next shot, come back to hold her hand again, and take the next photo. We took many photographs.

It wasn’t until I developed and enlarged the photos that I was suddenly struck by the profound surprise of seeing the image of my grandmother—naked at eighty-three, without her breasts, standing upright and smiling, proudly holding my hand. I realized that only photography can give us a gift as vital as this. If we hadn’t taken those photos, I would never have seen her expression, never have had this deeply moving experience, never have seen that image that reflected back to me the immense love and bond that united us. And I also understood that our common language was the act of photography.

For me, this has been the defining photograph of my life—the one that revealed to me the vital power of the photographic act and taught me everything an image can be for one as an artist, as a bond with the other, and ultimately with the viewer.

Anastasia Sierra: How did the project that became Álbum evolve? What motivated you to spend fourteen years on it?

Ana Casas Broda: I used to return regularly to Vienna to care for my grandmother. In 1995, she had to leave the home she had lived in for most of her life and move into a nursing home. The task of going through everything she had accumulated over the course of her life—photos, objects, documents belonging to her and to distant relatives, and to friends who had emigrated—gave me direct access to the history of my grandmother and of Vienna since the early 20th century.

My grandmother took photos her whole life; it was her way of connecting with the world and the present. She was driven by an urgent need to preserve everything—from her own diaries, documents, and photographs to political papers and letters from relatives, some of whom were close to her and others I didn’t know. I found her diaries particularly fascinating; in them, she recounts all the major events, such as the day the war ended, as well as the letters from all her Jewish friends who had emigrated. All of this opened a window for me onto the history of nearly the entire 20th century.

I realized then that the legacy my grandmother had given me—the result of her intense need to capture time—was a gift of my own history, which would become the subject of my work and through which I could reflect on the medium of photography from a privileged perspective, ranging from the intimacy of family history in private moments to the broader view of pivotal moments in world history.

My grandmother began taking photos as a teenager. Her father gave her a camera, and she learned to develop the photos in the sun, capturing her friends from the Socialist Youth—the circle of intellectuals in which she grew up and who were forced to emigrate during World War II. She and her sister had the opportunity to experience the tremendous vibrancy of interwar Vienna, where ideas, the arts, and freedom flourished—in part at their school, where some of the most important intellectuals and artists of their time taught: Oskar Kokoschka, Arnold Schönberg, and others.

I also faced the profound rupture that World War II represented. My grandmother’s first husband, Kurt Bettelheim, a Jewish communist activist, died of multiple sclerosis during the war. His family perished in the Theresienstadt concentration camp, and my grandmother kept all their personal belongings—photos, diaries—laden with the tremendous weight of history. 

It was particularly important to me to find self-portraits that my grandmother took regularly in front of the mirror—an act that spoke to me of a need to explore her identity through those photos, something I realized I shared with her. And her collection of self-portraits is a central treasure I’ve inherited that feeds into my reflection on photography and its powerful connection to identity.

My grandfather was a socialist and served for twenty years as Austria’s Minister of Justice, where he played a central role in landmark human rights reforms, abolishing the death penalty, decriminalizing homosexuality, legalizing abortion, and securing women’s right to work, among other reforms. At a time when human rights are being eroded in many parts of the world, that legacy has taken on renewed meaning for me.

After he left my grandmother, he remained a prominent public figure, appearing on television and in newspapers. My grandmother maintained an emotional connection with him by photographing his appearances on the screen. I realized this was another gift my family history had given me: it opened a line of reflection that has guided me ever since about photography, our relationship to mediated images, and the power of images to sustain presence.

I continued to visit my grandmother regularly at the nursing home until she died in 2002.

So, I spent fourteen years working on my photobook Álbum, in which I weave a narrative from photos and texts by both my grandmother and myself, telling this story and many others, creating a narrative that also reflects on photography as the medium most closely linked to the formation of contemporary identity. Photography as this living medium of history and of the way we relate to it, to the world, to others, and to ourselves.

Through this work, I discovered that it was my close bond with my grandmother  through photography—first in the photos she took of my childhood, a time full of changes and disruptions, to which she was both a witness and an accomplice through the affection in her gaze. I realized that my relationship with photography had been latent within me since I was a child and that it represents an act of affection and attention—a way of connecting with the world and with those we love.

During the years I was working on Álbum, my grandmother gradually lost her memory, as if leaving it up to me to tell this story.

Anastasia Sierra: You’ve lived between different countries and languages throughout your life. I also move between languages, and I’ve been thinking about how that shapes perception and expression. How has your experience of language influenced your relationship to writing and photography?

Ana Casas Broda: Growing up in several countries and speaking different languages has definitely shaped my life in every way. On the one hand, that experience left me with the wounded memory of a painful childhood marked by disruptions, but at the same time, it enriched my life profoundly by allowing me to move naturally between countries—something that has shaped my work and my subsequent professional life, in which I have always sought to build bridges and foster exchanges between different cultures and ways of understanding the world.

Anastasia Sierra: Do you ever feel that belonging to several places—and perhaps to none completely—has influenced your work? How has your understanding of home evolved over time?

Ana Casas Broda: Following up on my previous answer, this has had a profound impact on my work and has evolved over the years, allowing me to develop training programs with artists from a wide variety of backgrounds and with diverse working styles. A central focus of my work has been to create spaces for exchange and collaboration in photography, and since 2016, in photobooks through the Photobook Incubator program.

On the other hand, it led me to return to Vienna and Spain for many years, seeking to unravel my identity, my origins, and the gaps in my childhood. I have maintained a strong connection with both countries, which has transformed over time and is now also a professional bond that has opened many doors for me.

I recently realized that my deep love for photobooks grew over the fifteen years I spent caring for Omama in Vienna during the 1990s, where I had the opportunity to discover the most innovative photobooks of that time. That’s how I came across books like those published by de Scalo: Ray’s a Laugh by Richard Billingham, My Perfect Childhood by Larry Clark, and Raised by Wolves by Jim Goldberg and Philip Brookman. This book seemed to me to break with everything I’d seen in photobooks up to that point, and it made such an impact on me that I invited both authors to the Centro de la Imagen to lead a workshop. 

Although part of me feels at home in Vienna and Spain, my country of choice has been Mexico, the Latin American country with the most indigenous cultures dating back to before the Spanish conquest in 1521. Sixty-eight indigenous cultures coexist today, maintaining their native languages, much of their social and political structure, and worldviews that have merged with the Catholicism introduced by the Spanish. 

Mexico also welcomed all political exiles starting in the 1940s—Spaniards fleeing the Civil War, Chileans persecuted after the military coup against President Allende, and Argentines seeking refuge from the dictatorship’s massacres. When I arrived in Mexico as a child, I grew up in progressive schools where leftist intellectuals and artists sent their children, living alongside these communities of exiles from a young age. These schools and social circles gave me a sense of belonging to Mexico—to this country marked by migration, and the sometimes silent, sometimes violent, but always enriching coexistence of indigenous cultures.

Anastasia Sierra: I’d love to talk about Kinderwunsch. What compelled you to make this work, and how did the project begin?

Ana Casas Broda: I worked on Kinderwunsch for more than seven years. From the moment I decided to start it as a project, I immersed myself fully in all the complex and various stages of the process of becoming a mother—the experience of motherhood.

I decided to call it Kinderwunsch, in German, my mother tongue, because it’s a combination of the words “children” and “desire.” It’s used to refer to the desire to have children and to infertility. But I’m particularly interested in the combination of “children” and “desire” in the Lacanian sense—desire as that void that we fill with meaning throughout our lives and that keeps us moving, keeps us alive.

My desire to become pregnant began while we were caring for my grandmother in Vienna after she had a stroke. It was a very painful and distressing process that lasted more than five years. We saw several doctors, and no one could find the reason why I couldn’t get pregnant or why I kept losing the embryo in the first few weeks. I became increasingly aware that we only live once, and that if I didn’t fight to get pregnant, I would never experience motherhood.

It coincided with a time when motherhood became a central topic in the media. On TV, I spent my days watching Discovery Health, which nonstop aired shows like *Delivery Room* and *A Baby’s Story*—always featuring births, C-sections, couples talking about their desire to have children, and assisted fertility treatments. It was the time when Hollywood stars brought to light an entire generation of professional women who suddenly realized they had stopped listening to their biological clock. The photograph of Demi Moore, naked and pregnant, on the cover of *Vanity Fair* was one of many signs of a new era in the portrayal of motherhood and the development of assisted reproduction.

I watched births all day long, took photos of babies being born on television—painful images that reminded me of longed-for, unknown, and inscrutable experiences. After seeing more than ten doctors, healers, and specialists, one doctor finally diagnosed me with endometriosis; I underwent a laparoscopy, and within a month I was pregnant.

My desire for motherhood was so strong and visceral—it physically hurt. My desire didn’t stem from any family pressure; in fact, my mother used to say that it was more important to be a professional, and she spoke of having children as something she considered completely secondary. Perhaps it was the strained relationship she had with her own mother, or perhaps her admiration for her father, that shaped her own approach to motherhood. My childhood was painful, and my relationship with my mother has always been complex and difficult.

My desire to have children was unbearably intense; perhaps it was the desire to experience something unknown, to rewrite my own story, to navigate that experience in new ways.

I wanted to feel every moment of the process—pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding—my body transforming into something completely surprising and unknown, a journey to another place in the world, in life. I immersed myself completely in the physical and emotional experience, in the wonder of that new being feeding off me, rediscovering a world where time didn’t follow the rhythm of life as I knew it—a completely new experience, inhabiting another planet full of small and enormous discoveries.

I always knew I needed to have two children. Two children so that their scenario would not be like my childhood, so that their experience would be different and they would have more bonds in their lives. At age 42, I became pregnant with Lucio. This time, I decided to document the entire pregnancy process—photos with Martín, everything.

I also received a grant in Mexico to develop the book, and for three years, I received support that allowed me to turn my motherhood into my work—something I consider significant in a world where motherhood is not considered work and remains a major struggle.

The process of taking photos and my motherhood became everything; I’d go to bed looking at the photos on the wall, dream about them, and see them appear in my mind. One image called for the next, in that flow that occurs when photography becomes a body of work—a process of its own that originates within one but takes its own course and engages in a dialogue with the artist, creating a narrative that demands deeper exploration, immersion in what is discovered, going further, deeper.

In the first stage, the body dominated everything—the skin, breastfeeding day and night, the physical contact, hormones, milk, exhaustion, depression, love, joy, nights and days blend into a seamless, delirious time, full of pleasure and pain, contrasting and intense emotions that intertwine without pause. The work of *Kinderwunsch* took shape through stages dominated by contradictory sensations and experiences. One that particularly captivated me was a small series I created with a compact camera that allowed me to take photos from very close up—capturing skin-to-skin contact, breastfeeding, the intimacy, that body nourished by mine, those bodies intertwining and losing their boundaries.

When Martín turned six, I slipped into a deep depression. Long-forgotten memories from my childhood began to resurface, transporting me back to my own childhood. Like apparitions, feelings welled up from deep within—to a lonely little girl who still lives inside me. I discovered that this is what motherhood does, too: it takes you back to forgotten times, to the pain or the joy of childhood.

So, I shifted from capturing unexpected moments of growth to capturing actions, which are the most important part of the project. On a particularly intense day of being cooped up with my two children, ages two and six, I decided to set up the camera on a tripod, position the lights, undress, and lie down on the floor. Immediately, my two children thrown themselves on top of me. Martín threw himself on me, hugging me, while Lucio clung to my chest and placed his little hand over my mouth. I was taking pictures with a remote control, completely oblivious to the images that might be being captured. When I saw them, it was the second time I felt the urge to explore another universe that was opening up to me through those photos. That moment when what we see touches something unconscious that we sensed but would never have discovered otherwise, and at the same time opens an unknown canal that allows us to immerse ourselves in other experiences, to explore new paths, new images.

My son Martín was the oldest, and he would come up with games like turning me into a mummy with toilet paper or plaster bandages, drawing on my body, bathing in milk, or covering me in paint.  The photo was always unpredictable—a surprise. These photos emerge from an absolute present that the three of us inhabit through our shared experiences, and they become images that transcend the moment to become metaphors for different layers of motherhood as a total experience—one that defies words, definitions, and preconceptions.)

Anastasia Sierra: As someone currently working on a photo book about motherhood and family, I’ve been thinking about how writing can both clarify and complicate photographic work—and how it can sometimes risk overexplaining or pulling attention away from the images. In Kinderwunsch, the text and images seem to carry equal weight, and neither feels subordinate to the other. How did you arrive at that balance?

Ana Casas Broda: The images I took over the course of seven years—which make up the body of work known as Kinderwunsch—were born out of my obsessions, visions that appeared to me, a deep need to connect with my children in the present—first through photos, and later through staged actions in which I set up the camera and lighting and let my oldest son come up with games where I was part of the scene, shooting with a remote control, with no control over the final outcome of the images. As I delved deeper into the series, the photos themselves demanded other images, and the work engaged in a dialogue with me, shaping and reshaping me through the photos, within this experience filled with the strongest contradictions—from the desperate desire to achieve a pregnancy for more than five years, the assisted fertility treatments, the joy of pregnancy, the deepest love, a period of depression related to my own childhood that my son Martín’s brought to the surface, and the constant surprise of the experience and our ever changing lives. 

Unlike Álbum, where the text was interwoven with the photos on the pages, in Kinderwunsch I decided to have the text run parallel to the photos, in small inserts throughout the book. Like the photos, the narrative structure is not linear; it moves back and forth in time, following the rhythm of experiences in which time periods overlap—past, present, and future coexist in the same emotional space, sometimes harmoniously, but more often clashing to create tension, pain, and joy.

My intention was for the text and images to coexist, but not to relate directly to one another. Two narratives in which words create images that cannot be photographed, and the photos exist on their own, without needing to be explained. 

However, I am aware that in my narrative I can never avoid the urge to tell the whole story, to place the reader within a plot they can access—even though I believe that in many cases I could perhaps tell less.

Anastasia Sierra: Did the writing and the photographs emerge together, or did one medium lead the other?

Ana Casas Broda: The photos and texts emerged at different times. Creating the photos was like a trance-like state in which the images that appeared in my head flowed unconsciously and without pause, or arose from the surprise of the unpredictable actions I set in motion but did not control—and they were always an unexpected event.

The texts emerged at the end, all at once, like a torrent that was just waiting for the right moment to flow. Once the writing process began, it became just as immersive and obsessive as the images. 

And finally, the editing—the process of constructing the order that gave shape to the narrative—is always a particularly intense period, during which I work long hours and which reveals new insights into the creative process itself, and into life itself. During that stage, I also took photos and wrote texts to complete the narrative, fill in gaps, and add meaning to the story.

For me, the photobook is the ideal format for constructing this narrative—so complex and full of layers and contradictions—and the perfect medium for sharing it with the reader, allowing each person to have their own singular and unique experience at their own pace, in their own space and time.

Anastasia Sierra: One of the things that struck me about Kinderwunsch is that it reveals so much of your inner life and family history, yet it never feels confessional or voyeuristic. The photographs and writing work together to create an emotional space that feels both deeply personal and universal. How did you think about the relationship between text and image, and how did you decide what to reveal—and what to leave unsaid?

Ana Casas Broda: It has always been very clear to me that my projects—and those of others I’ve been fortunate enough to work with—begin in an inner place, and after a while, the work itself dictates the next steps; the creative process takes on its own rhythm and needs, engaging in a dialogue with me as the author, until it becomes a work with its own demands. That is why I believe that using the first person in narrative is an authorial decision, and that does not mean the final work is solely personal, confessional, or insular. There comes a moment in the creative process when the work breaks away from you as its creator, and you must learn to follow its needs, immersing yourself in a dialogue with your own creation. Ultimately, something very profound unites all human beings; that is why I believe that the more deeply we delve into individual experience, the more universal we become.

Anastasia Sierra: What was the process of making the book? How did you approach sequencing, integrating the text, and designing the object itself? Did you collaborate with others during the editing and design stages?

Ana Casas Broda: For me, the process of making a book is one of the most interesting and unique forms of work there is. In my case, it has been a fairly solitary experience, though at certain stages, feedback from some very special people has helped me in various ways. But when it comes to the final layout process, I’ve almost always figured it out on my own, relying on support only for certain basic aspects of design or image processing for the final book.

But I always wanted to experience dialogue with a diverse and interesting group of people during the book-making process. That’s why, in 2016, I created the Photobook Incubator Program at Hydra, where in each session I learn a tremendous amount alongside every author developing their book, and I’m amazed by the enormous variety of working methods and approaches to creating photobooks—whether from authors, editors, designers, artists, writers, or anyone else involved in this process.

Anastasia Sierra:Tell me about the pictures that didn’t get included. What other kinds of books might Kinderwunsch have become? 

Ana Casas Broda: I don’t really think there were other versions of Kinderwunsch at the time. I think photobooks are like other experiences in life—they happen when they’re meant to, with the resources and abilities you have at that specific moment.

In the case of Álbum, however, given the extensive experience I’ve gained working on books with other authors and experimenting with formats, materials, and printing methods, I think I could have created a slightly different book. I wish I’d known then what I know now about materials and production methods. I also would have left some things out and delved deeper into other parts of the narrative. But back then, the resources were beyond my reach.

Anastasia Sierra: At what point did you feel that Kinderwunsch was complete?

Ana Casas Broda: It’s interesting, but with both of my books, I could sense the moment they were finished. In the case of Kinderwunsch, it was a very clear feeling that I had come full circle. Two photos in particular marked the end for me. The first is of my oldest son, Martín, washing my hair in the bathtub—he’s already nine years old in that photo. And the second, and more decisive one, is a moment when Martín suggested we play together with whipped cream. I’ve always been very aware that the themes of motherhood, nudity, physical closeness, and affection are highly controversial topics that spark very contradictory and intense emotions and debates. 

Anastasia Sierra: I’m currently making work that involves my own family, and I’ve been thinking about consent, memory, and how children come to understand images made of them over time. How did your children’s understanding of Kinderwunsch change as they grew older?

Ana Casas Broda: My children are now 18 and 22 years old, and they haven’t asked me about the photos. In the various stages following the book’s publication, the work has been featured in major solo exhibitions, and they’ve accompanied me to them. Up until the most recent exhibition, there was never any discomfort or awkwardness about the photos. We’ve looked at them together as shared memories, especially with my oldest son, and I get the impression that we share a natural relationship with the body, affection, physical contact, and nudity. But you never know what will happen over time.

Anastasia Sierra: Do you still photograph them? 

Ana Casas Broda:I had stopped for a long time. But a very serious crisis involving my youngest son two years ago made me start taking photos again. He was hospitalized and nearly died, which led me to feel an urgent need to take photos, to write, and to try to capture the intensity and elusiveness of this incredibly difficult experience. I’m still taking photos and gathering material. But I’ve slowed down a bit for now and have focused more on the need to share life with them and support them during this stage of their lives.

Anastasia Sierra: What was it like making work about motherhood 15–20 years ago? Your work is so honest and vulnerable that I imagine it may have elicited strong or even conflicting reactions. How did people respond to the work, and what was that experience like for you?

Ana Casas Broda: I had created Álbum, both as a book and as an exhibition, in which a large portion of the images are nudes of my 83-year-old grandmother, my mother, and self-portraits of myself, also nude. The work stirred up some unease, but the nudity, in its context, was controversial only on very rare occasions. 

After I’d been working on Kinderwunsch for a while, I showed it to an editor from the United States who had come to lead a workshop, and I was surprised by her scandalized reaction to the nudity of my young children. 

When Lucio was born, I was incredibly lucky that British curator Susan Bright contacted me about a self-portrait book called *Autofocus*, a collection of self-portraits by a wide variety of interesting contemporary photographers. I hadn’t shown my project to almost anyone, and when I shared it with her, a fertile friendship and connection grew between us. Susan was working on her Ph.D. on Representations of Motherhood in Contemporary Photography, and she was also about to give birth to her daughter. So, for a long time, we shared photos, readings, authors, and experiences that deeply enriched me. I was fortunate enough to discover Mary Kelly’s Post Partum Document, as well as the books Motherhood as Experience and Institution by Adrienne Rich, Feminist Art and the Maternal by Andrea Liss, and works by Mierle Laderman, Renée Cox, Moira Roth, Lydia Davis, Annie Ernaux, Mary Gaitskill, Jane Lazarre, Margaret Mead, Toni Morrison, Tillie Olsen, Sylvia Plath, Sara Ruddick, Mona Simpson, Alice Walker,Joy Williams, and many other extraordinary authors.

In 2013, the Spanish publishing house La Fábrica published Kinderwunsch as a book. In 2014 it was included in Susan Bright’s exhibition and book, Home Truths, where various artists presented works on motherhood, among them controversial and fascinating artists like Leigh Ledare, Elina Brotherus’s series on the impossibility of motherhood and assisted fertility procedures, and the work of Janine Antoni, Elinor Carucci, Tierney Gearon, Fred Hüning, Miyako Ishiuchi, Ann Fessler, Annu Palakunnathu Matthew, Katie Murray.

During the exhibition, I participated in a few radio interviews with Elinor Carucci, and we gave a talk together. As I listened to her describe her project on motherhood, I noticed that she emphasized that she did not show her young children’s private parts, and I realized that her fear of the public’s reaction—especially in the United States—to the work was evident in the way she approached it. Although I was familiar with the reactions that Sally Mann’s work had provoked over the years—and how, at certain times, child nudity had become a particularly controversial topic—until that moment I hadn’t expected a negative response to Kinderwunsch. But then, for a moment, I feared a negative reaction, which fortunately never happened. 

In 2015 Kinderwunsch was presented as a large-scale solo exhibition at the PHotoEspaña festival in Madrid; from there, it traveled to various venues in Austria and Mexico. Surprisingly, the response was always very positive and empathetic, evoking in the audience memories of their own childhoods or experiences of motherhood and fatherhood.

But at the same time, I’ve found that Kinderwunsch evokes completely contradictory reactions in those who view it. My friends—writers and curators— and the audience in general react in radically different ways; for some, it evoked intensely pleasant memories of their own motherhood or childhood, while for others, it brought to the surface deep depression or unpleasant experiences. Little by little, I came to realize that motherhood touches on a period of our experience as children in which there is still no language, and it evokes intense unconscious emotions—whether pleasant or sad—depending on our childhood. And for mothers (and often for fathers as well), it brings to the surface an intense time during which the body is central to the entire experience—the hormones, breastfeeding, insomnia, and so many emotions that intertwine in a moment that remains encapsulated within a specific period of time, which is then gradually forgotten and overshadowed by the new experiences of constantly changing motherhood.

Anastasia Sierra: When we first connected, you mentioned you were at a photography event in Argentina. What were the highlights? What feels most exciting in Latin American photography at the moment, and in Mexico in particular? Also, could you talk about Hydra: how did it begin, what need was it responding to at the time, and how has it evolved since then? 

Ana Casas Broda: I worked in the educational program at the Centro de la Imagen for nearly twenty-five years. From 2007 to 2015, I coordinated the Contemporary Photography Seminar, developing its academic structure and bringing together Mexican and international faculty. The program paired participants from the Centro de la Imagen in Mexico City with scholarship recipients from CaSa in Oaxaca, creating an exchange between photographers from across the country.

Again, this was a pivotal moment in the history of photography—the moment when digital technology took off, making access to photography more democratic, just as the internet was spreading to remote communities in Mexico, transforming the image from an instrument of power for those who previously had access to cameras, books, museums, and information in general and making it  widely available

The seminar brought together participants from remote indigenous communities that have preserved their social and religious structures, languages, and traditions since before the Spanish conquest—some more syncretic than others. It was fascinating to see how contemporary photography was used in the imaginations of these diverse artists creating surprising bodies of work, new ways of seeing and representing.

This particular experience had a profound impact on my way of working.

Around the same time, Gabriela González Reyes, Gerardo Montiel Klint, and I decided to create Hydra, a platform that would allow us to develop independent projects. I used my home to house Hydra: on the ground floor, a bookstore and a gallery from 2012 to 2025, and on the second floor, a classroom, a printing workshop, a library, a terrace, and a guest room for workshop instructors. I focused on launching a bookstore specializing in international photobooks, and in 2016 I decided to create the Photobook Incubator program. 

Based on the premise that the groups of authors should be as diverse as possible in terms of age, background, experience, and subject matter—and with a similarly diverse team of instructors—this program aims to create a space for dialogue, collaboration, and experimentation in the field of the photobook. 

From the very first edition, authors from many parts of Mexico and other countries—such as Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Italy, Spain, and Argentina—enrolled in the program. 

For the second edition of the Incubator, we reduced the number of guests but extended the duration of their participation, so that the work could be explored in greater depth during each meeting. Key to this second edition were the participation of Ramon Pez and Yumi Goto. Ramon Pez shared his extraordinary creativity, in which design, narrative, and materials all came together in a natural and surprising way. Working with Yumi Goto introduced us to her approach to the photobook as an object, with exhaustive and in-depth work on editing and narrative; furthermore, we learned from her about her laser and inkjet printing system for creating photobooks handmade by the authors. This was combined with research into papers, local materials, and printing methods that allowed us to explore many more possibilities for book creation. 

So, by the end of the second generation of the Incubator, we had many extraordinary, handmade photobooks that we presented at the Hydra gallery and at Les Rencontres d’Arles, where they received an incredible response from the public. That same summer, we printed 19 of those photobooks in offset, and we traveled with the authors to fairs around the world. 

This marked the launch of the Hydra publishing house, and since then, we have held five editions of the Incubator program and published around forty photobooks.

Currently Hydra is a flexible space with an educational program that has gradually adapted to our needs, where the bookstore and the publishing house have been the main constants and the center of most of our activities.

Anastasia Sierra: How does Hydra work as a photobook incubator in practice? What does a typical project cycle look like, from idea to publication?

Ana Casas Broda:The Incubator begins with the participant selection process. We do not require a fully developed project or any specific prerequisites, but rather a commitment and a desire to explore a topic that is important enough to the artist to allow them to immerse themselves in and persist with the creative process throughout the program. Another essential aspect is creating groups that are diverse in terms of age, experience, background, and interests, so that the group work itself fosters an enriching dialogue and exchange.

Guests are selected in the same way. I seek to involve different editors and designers who have interesting projects and a wide range of approaches to the photobook. In addition, we work with Beatriz Novaro, an extraordinary writer, screenwriter, and educator who supports participants in delving into writing as a form of inner exploration—an approach that always enriches the project, whether or not it ultimately includes text. Other instructors also participate, providing the necessary tools for working with image and design, as well as for experimenting with materials and printing.

Through approximately 6 to 8 modules, participants work with these guest artists, exposing themselves to highly contrasting approaches to photobooks, which provides them with a broad overview of the possibilities available to them as they work on their own projects.

The goal is for each author to develop their book’s narrative to its full potential, achieving coherence between form and content, and to learn as much as possible about the book production process, enabling them to bring their book to final print—whether offset, digital, or hybrid formats.

It is incredibly rewarding for me to work with the authors and see how fully engaged they are, how the stories unfold and take shape, and how, through this process, they learn every step of the way—from working in InDesign, collaborating with designers when necessary, to preparing for press, adjusting files, selecting materials, printing, and binding.

Anastasia Sierra: What is your vision for Hydra going forward? What kinds of projects or conversations feel most urgent to you now?

Ana Casas Broda: I think the photobook scene has changed a lot over the past decade since we launched the Photobook Incubator and our publishing project. For the past few years, we’ve been invited to fairs all over the world, and the scene in Latin America is particularly rich, diverse, and innovative.

Hydra is at a key moment, one in which we need to rethink how we make books, as well as their production and distribution. As an initiative that contributes to this effort, I’ve also launched a project this year called Fotolibros.lat—a collective of Latin American publishers—which, within a month, was joined by seventy authors and publishers. Our first presentation was in May at Photo London, and we’ll soon be at Fiebre in Madrid; we’re hoping to participate in Polycopies in Paris and have applied to the Tokyo Book Art Fair.

Fotolibros.lat stores the books in a warehouse I rent in Madrid, enabling numerous independent publishing projects and authors to showcase their books at book fairs across Europe. Additionally, we can sell copies of the books online from Madrid, making shipping to Europe more affordable. We also aim to facilitate participation in book fairs by shipping books from Madrid and taking turns attending various events, so that it isn’t always necessary to attend every fair in person, and to share the costs among all members of the collective.

This project is still in its early stages and is a major challenge in every way, but I hope we can make it work well and consolidate it in the coming months.

Hydra has always had several areas of focus. One of these is seminars and workshops on art criticism, conservation, and curation, primarily led by my partner Gabriela González Reyes. At the same time, I have been responsible for conducting various workshops with international artists and publishers, which we will continue to organize organically in conjunction with our other activities.

This year, we will focus on widely promoting—both nationally and internationally—the four new photobooks we have just published: Hay pájaros en el alambre by Gabriela García Rivas, To be like everyone else by Anaí Tirado, Unsettled Moments by Mariana Gruener, and Come to eat my body by Raúl Jiménez Jiménez.

I’m interested in continuing the Photobook Incubator program, always adapting it to new contexts and challenges.

Anastasia Sierra: What are you working on now? And what does a good or exciting working day look like for you at this stage in your practice?

Ana Casas Broda: In my personal work, I’m slowly exploring my children’s adolescence and environment, alongside my mother’s old age and the inevitable approach of her death. Through photos, audio recordings, and texts, I’m gradually creating a new project that will take shape over time.

At Hydra, as I mentioned, we’re in the process of finishing the print run for the fourth photobook we’re publishing this year—Come to Eat My Body—and we’ll be attending numerous national and international fairs to promote these books and to consolidate the Fotolibros.lat project.

For me, an exciting day at work is marked by an unexpected encounter at the bookstore—someone looking for a book that leads to an enriching and moving conversation.

Traveling to participate in a photobook fair and attending alongside the books’ authors, sharing experiences with the public in encounters that are always surprising and exciting.

Or a day during the Incubator program: stepping out my front door and finding authors working on their projects from 9 a.m. until 11 or 12 p.m., and then partying until 5 a.m. on the terrace of the Hydra classroom.

An author’s visit to finalize details of their book, to discuss the narrative, design, and paper choices with them, and to make final decisions.

Going to the printer to review proofs or accompanying authors through the printing process.

Receiving the finished copies of long-awaited and wonderful books.

Other times, hosting a particularly extraordinary workshop, such as the writing workshops led by Beatriz Novaro, who inspires participants to delve in unexpected ways into previously unexplored experiences and spend three hours listening to unique voices with stories that never cease to amaze me, guided by Beatriz’s generosity, wisdom, and mentorship, undoubtedly one of the most extraordinary artists and teachers I have ever met in my life.

My work gives me the good fortune to encounter the surprise of creation, reflection, and dialogue with fascinating people full of stories to share.

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Anastasia Sierra is a photographer based in Boston. Her work explores the psychological complexities of motherhood, womanhood, and the domestic sphere, revealing profound vulnerability inherent in intergenerational bonds.

Sierra’s photographs have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at the Griffin Museum of Photography, Danforth Art Museum, Emerson Contemporary Gallery, Panopticon Gallery, Duncan Miller Gallery and Blue Sky Gallery. She is a winner of a  2026 LensCulture Art Photography Award, was named a 2025 Photolucida Critical Mass Top 50 finalist, and is included in the 2025 Lenscratch Student Prize: Top 25 to Watch. 

Her work is featured in the anthology Eye Mama: Poetic Truths of Home and Motherhood (teNeues Verlag, 2023) and has appeared in DEAR DAVE, Lenscratch, and Musée Magazine. Sierra holds a BA in Linguistics and an MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

Instagram: @anastasiasierra