Photography

Xan Padrón

“We the People” and “Baker’s Global Rainbow”

We the People

Ever since I started with the process of becoming a naturalized US citizen I began to play with the idea of recreating the US flag. Since I’m based in New York City and that’s the city I’ve documented the most, I started this process in my neighborhood, the West Village, at the red wall I photographed so much over the years, and then I began to look for a blue wall and a white one and once I found them I just stayed there taking pictures of people walking in the neighborhoods I inhabit ... It was a fascinating process for me, New York City is just a universe in itself and creating this flag in the city where millions of immigrants (like me) became locals, was my way of trying to visualize the “We" as opposed to the “I”. No matter how divided we think we are, we still are a community of people sharing a space in the world, and a way of life…

                                       

     

Baker's Global Rainbow“Baker’s Global Rainbow” uses the colors of the original rainbow flag designed by artist Gilbert Baker to honor the San Francisco Gay Freedom Parade in 1978. The design of the original flag had eight colors, each one with its own symbolism, but because of practical matters, two of those colors disappeared to give rise to the flag that we have today: a six-color rainbow. This Time Lapse was created during the pandemic, with material I had from previous pieces, with images of random people passing by some of the walls featured in pieces from New York, London, Rio de Janeiro, Beijing, Sidney and Los Angeles.