8Small Death by Martha Naranjo Sandoval<\/a><\/p>\n Assembled with the warmth of a family album, Small Death is a work of unusual beauty. It maps a fragmented, ten-year journey through the artist\u2019s years living in the States, painstakingly selected from an archive of over 500 rolls of film. It grapples with various themes central to Sandoval\u2019s life in this period, but the overarching question it bravely asks is: does a version of you die when you move to a new place? Painting a layered and personal portrait of what it means to be an immigrant in America today, the resulting book moves gesturally between golden hour streetscapes, searching nudes, abstractions and tender images of her loved ones. Offering a poignant reflection on borders and belonging, Small Death is released during a time when immigrant lives are under threat in Trump\u2019s America, making its subject matter all the more pressing.\u00a0<\/p>\n Here, the artist speaks on expressing love through image-making, the slippery nature of identity and the physicality of being a woman with a bigger body.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was born, my dad got this camera and this book that was like a step-to-step guide to being a photographer. He did it all just to take pictures of me. My dad is not a very vocal person with his love, but seeing him notice me [through the camera] made me feel loved. Having that relationship to photography was important for me, even though I didn\u2019t realise it at the time.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI left Mexico City in 2014, just two years out of film school. It was a \u2018something has got to change\u2019 kind of decision. I thought, I\u2019ll just go to New York and do an MFA and we\u2019ll see what happens. The US and Mexico are so close to each other and there\u2019s so much exchange between them, but you don\u2019t realise how culturally different they are until you move. I would come home at night after work and my head would hurt from speaking English all day. Physically, it felt like a huge change.<\/p>\n \u201cI started taking pictures because I wanted to have a document of this alteration that was happening in my life and who I was becoming from it. When I started photographing myself, I had just moved here alone. You can feel the camera very close to my face. I would photograph my hands and my feet, or I would photograph myself in the mirror.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhen Dylan, my husband, came into the picture, I started photographing him a lot and getting a lot of joy from him. That gave me joy in photographing myself, as he would help me take pictures. Then I really started experimenting and wanting to see what my body looked like when I did stuff. I\u2018m a heavier person and my body makes all of these shapes that I really enjoy, that other bodies maybe can\u2019t do. I feel like my art should be a little risky \u2013 what I mean by that is, I want to give all of myself to my practice.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe book features a handful of people: my brother, my mum, my dad, my husband and my cat, if you count the cat as a person. I really like photographing my parents in particular. What I noticed very early on is that they do it not necessarily because they want pictures of themselves or because they understand what I do, although I think my mum understands better, but because they love me.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the big hurdles that I had was how much work I have. I had ten years and 550 rolls to get through. I wanted to talk about my home country. I wanted to talk about the border. I also wanted to talk about the physicality of being a woman, especially a woman that is bigger than most women. I was having a hard time collapsing all of that into one story. Instead, I decided to tell smaller stories that are sewn together.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are a lot of reasons why my book is called Small Death, but in some ways you die a little when you emigrate. The person that you were no longer exists. You have to decide what to put in your bags, metaphorically, and what you\u2019re leaving behind. Home and belonging are things that I think about a lot. Trying to define them is like trying to hold something slippery. So much of me being a photographer is trying to grapple with these things.<\/p>\n<\/a>
![\"Martha](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/463489.jpeg\")
Martha Naranjo Sandoval, from Small Death (Mack, 2025)Courtesy of the artist and Mack<\/p>\n<\/a>
![\"Martha](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/463487.jpeg\")
Martha Naranjo Sandoval, from Small Death (Mack, 2025)Courtesy of the artist and Mack<\/p>\n
![\"Martha](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/463488.jpeg\")
Martha Naranjo Sandoval, from Small Death (Mack, 2025)Courtesy of the artist and Mack<\/p>\n