It takes a certain bit of moxie to photograph nudes. However, to step in front of the lens and expose freckles, birthmarks, and whatever is hidden underneath your clothes is a whole different demon. Alejandra Guerrero takes it a step further, capturing her own sensual physique in some of the most well-done self portrait work we’ve come across. Her camera is her mirror. We peek over her shoulder and get as intimate as we can with the lovely photographer and model.

Tell us which came first, the desire to be in front of the camera or behind it.

When I started doing photography, I began shooting self portraits. In the beginning, I just wanted to experiment and wasn’t thinking too much about why I was putting myself in front of the camera. It was a matter of convenience too, since I saw myself as someone else - just another character in a photo. I also felt the need to express a more intimate self in photos and felt my presence could be an interesting part of the image. Ultimately, the photos try to help me to answer the question of “who am I?”

Describe the point in your life when you knew you wanted to capture your point-of-view through a lens.

Years ago, I was taking a break from Fine Arts School and took a job in a photo lab/portrait studio. The work I did with other people’s photos gave me an appreciation and an interest for photography and so I decided to do it as a career. I was not very sure in the beginning what kind of photos I wanted to take, so I enrolled in a photography 101 college course where I started discovering my artistic vision. Having previously been doing video art, my first successful photos were influenced greatly by that video aesthetic expressing images as an intimate flow of loose unconscious thoughts. Later on, my work evolved as my interests within the medium shifted into a different direction.

Did your self-portraits derive as a need to pick up the camera and shoot whenever you had an itch or for the need of self-expression… or both. Please explain.

I’d have to say both. Sometimes an idea comes up and I just have to execute it somehow. Then I just see myself as the vehicle to do so at that given moment. Other times there are thoughts and emotions within that I feel a need to express somehow and I just pick up the camera and do it.

Your site is alt-er-ego.com. Does the women in your self-portraits have a name and personality different from Alejandra?

All the women in my self portraits are me; they are different sides of me. Just as the site’s name suggests, they are alter egos. My main alter ego is the Corporate Vampire. I dress in business suits with fine lingerie and fetish gear underneath portraying myself as a Vampy business woman, a mysterious Femme Fatale, seducing men with my intellect and allure.

Most artists are their own worse critic. When it comes to your self-portraits, how judgmental are you in both your body cathesis and the actual shot.

I experiment a lot and when it comes to doing self portraits its more random and raw to me than when I shoot erotica or fashion which I am more critical of myself than that with my self-p’s. It’s a flow of images and observation through mirrors or whatever I find I can make myself present in an image so I take couple of shots and usually there is always something I like… when I feel it expressed that idea I had in mind. It all depends on inspiration and my state of mind/being and whats going on in my life that I feel I need to say something about.

Within your self-portraits, what do you believe has been some of your biggest discoveries about yourself?

You know how you always look at yourself in the mirror in a certain way and that’s the image you have thought of yourself throughout your life. When I shoot self-portraits, I play with angles, composition, reflections, abstractions, space and moments, and adding myself into that gives me a different view of myself. I am able to express my sexuality within the confines of my camera. I can explore emotions in film that are otherwise difficult to express. I used to be very shy and awkward, but my subconscious has pushed itself to the surface in my self-portraits, and I am much less inhibited now because of it. Through my photos, I’ve continued to reinvent myself and I’ve seen myself transform over the years into the person I am today.

And have you been able to carry these discoveries whether it’s photographic technique or positioning and posing of the models into your shoots with other subjects.

I definitely use some techniques from my self-portraits in my work with other models, but I have a different perspective when I’m behind the camera and not in front of it. When I shoot others, I create fictions for the most part. I like creating stories of seduction and eroticism that I try to express in my photos. I find myself using more wide angles. It’s different framing the photo from the outside than from the inside like I do with my self portraits. I often tell people that the reality in my work appears when I shoot myself and the fantasy shows up in my photography of others.

You work with adult personalities from Playboy’s Julie Strain to Vivid-Alt’s Kimberly Kane. Tell us what attracts you to a model/personality and your process for casting a shoot.

It depends. Often, I see other people’s work and I like the model in the photo. I appreciate what the photographer has done with her and so I ask the model to pose for me. Also, I look around different modeling sites for models. Sometimes I meet people who strike me in person and other times I get contacted by amazing models. I certainly have types of people which I’m more interested in working with because I feel that they can represent my vision more effectively. They need to have some physical characteristics that appeal to me, of course. I’m most successful when I’m able to have a good connection with the model. I can translate my ideas more effectively. I love working with some models over and over; we get along so well and make such awesome photos together that they become sort of like “muses” to me.

Being a model yourself, how important is there to have an emotional connection to the narrative or theme of the photographer’s vision.

It’s the most important thing so that the image comes out at its best. If I’m able to respond and connect with the photographer’s vision, the end result has always been an awesome image. I like letting others whose work I admire, translate their vision through my body. Its always interesting how others see you and how different you become; vision is so individual and subjective.

Speaking of narrative and themes, what attracted you to work in the world of erotica?

It might have to do with the fact that I grew up in a very Catholic and more conservative society where there are many taboos about sex. I’ve always had a rebellious questioning nature. I became very fascinated by the human body in my teens when I started painting. Later on in college, the nude drawing class was one of my favorites. I saw the human body as a work of art and was very interested in human sexuality and the vulnerable nature of the human condition. I find the world of erotica in all its different expressions fascinating, from the origin of life to all its representations, fetish, passion, love and lust. It’s a common bond for us all. I’m just more open about it and I find it an awesome theme to keep exploring.

I see influence from various photographers in your portfolio as well as an homage to Helmut Newton. Who else has inspired you?

My first love in photography was David LaChapelle. I became familiar with his work through Details magazine (that I loved when I was a teen) and his photos impressed me so much that at the time I used to derive paintings from some of them. I’m also very enticed by the works of surrealist artists such as Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Giorgio di Chirico, Max Ernst, Paul Delvaux. When I started college I was geared more towards video art and film so my influences were at the time people like David Lynch, Stanley Kubrick, Bill Viola, Nam Yum Paik and Sadie Benning. As I got into photography I became very fascinated by the works of Cindy Sherman. I remember loving her first works, Untitled Film Stills, because I enjoyed how she used herself as a different person with this kind of voyeuristic feeling, as if someone else was observing this woman in all these different disguises. Then later on as I went deeper into photography, I started to love the works of Guy Bourdin, Terry Richardson, Helmut Newton, Tony Ward and Steve Diet Goedde. On a fun note, I became familiar with Steve Diet Goedde’s work browsing a coffee table book my friend had, The Beauty of Fetish. At the time I remember it making such an impression on me. I thought to myself, ‘I want to do this kind of work - alluring, sexy, erotic, but very well thought and elegant.’ Many years later I met Steve at a gallery show in LA. Some time later we became friends and I was lucky to have modeled for him. Life’s interesting like that.

Tell us where we can see more of your work and what’s ahead for you.

Right now on my web site and on flickr, I’m going to start selling prints through a gallery in Europe next month and I also plan on doing some art shows, maybe putting a book together and well, I’m very ambitious so I have bigger plans and more projects I’m working on. I’m very happy that my career is going steady well and I’m making a living out of it.

Taste it:
www.alt-er-ego.com
www.flickr.com/photos/corporatevampire