Quetzal Maucci is a visual storyteller, an activist, and a deep thinker. Although she’s now based in London, Quetzal grew up in San Francisco and around the Bay Area as the child of two immigrant parents.
Identity is a big question for Quetzal, and as she experiments with constructing her own identity as an artist and as a human, her commitment to impacting the social issues closest to her heart finds a voice in every element of her photography.
Quetzal credits her early passion for photography to her very artistic mothers. “Both of them were interested in different creative arts, like poetry, music, photography, painting, dancing,” she tells Adorama. “They always gave me that freedom to choose what I wanted to do in life.” Quetzal attended an art high school and was involved in theater as a kid, but her interest in photography was a constant. “Then I realized I could do it for a career, so I pushed myself to apply to NYU for photography and imaging,” she adds.
Quetzal works with Canon and Sigma lenses to fit her Canon 5D Mark III and Mark II cameras. She also shoots film using a Mamiya 67 medium-format camera and a Canon AE-1. “In my generation, there’s this tendency to go back to the slower processes of photography,” Quetzal says, “When I use film, it takes a lot longer to take a shot, it takes longer to set things up. I want to keep that slower process in my work to really connect with somebody.”
Slowing down and diving deeper are some of the main ways Quetzal exercises her critical eye, and takes issue with the images featured in the news media for their ability to feel disconnected. “It’s a very removed, cold way of photographing social issues,” she adds. “It doesn’t seem like they give time to really figure out what the story is, or to see it in different ways. A lot of news outlets all say the same thing and it’s all owned by the same people.”
It’s her dedication to a more profound photographic expression that led Quetzal to call herself a visual storyteller, instead of billing herself as a documentary photographer or a photojournalist.
This philosophical approach also informs the way Quetzal combines her own personal social activism with her work as a photographer. “Growing up with two lesbian parents who were also immigrants, they always took me to marches in San Francisco and showed me that I could have a voice,” Quetzal says. She currently works with The Vavengers, a creative collective working to create awareness about female genital mutilation, and with Stand for Humanity, a community project dedicated to supporting and celebrating refugees.
Instead of signing up as a photographer from the outset, Quetzal volunteers her time with the organizations that she wants to support personally, and if a photography project emerges from it, all the better. “The photography just comes out of the work that I felt like I wanted to be doing,” she says. “First I get myself involved, and then later on become more of a photographer figure.”
Up until recently, Quetzal was working full-time as a junior picture editor and photographer with Comic Relief, a charity tackling poverty in the UK. While the activist bent of the job satisfied both Quetzal’s passions and her need to make a living, she quickly tired of the 9-5 in-office routine and has since transitioned over to a freelance lifestyle. She’s still working with Comic Relief as a freelance photographer, in addition to her gig photography and backstage work at music events, assistant work for other professional photographers, and freelance picture editing for publications and organizations throughout the UK, including the prestigious BAFTA awards.
“I think that’s what art is — a reflection of the society that we’re in, and trying to challenge that and give voice to that,”
The idea for Children of Immigrants: Portraits of A Generation, came to Quetzal as part of a documentary photography class at NYU, but the project really arose organically out of her own experience as a child of immigrant parents. “I had been losing my way a little bit,” Quetzal recalls, “but I was always seeing immigration in the news looked at so negatively and with so much stigma, and I felt really close to that. I wanted to share my own views and give it a more positive perspective.”
The portrait series is supported by conversations Quetzal conducted with fellow children of immigrants, investigating experience and identity to show the world a new perspective on what being an immigrant really means in today’s world. “I think that’s what art is — a reflection of the society that we’re in, and trying to challenge that and give voice to that,” she says.
You can see Children of Immigrants on display at the New Americans Museum in San Diego, California this summer.
