Tamez refers to this introductory body of work as a ‘mixtape.’ “This is a distillation,” she says. “I started by looking at tens of thousands of pictures, and then I made a layout of around 400 pages. It was a self reflective process, because this is the introduction to my style, to my world, to my visual language.”
She began building that lexicon early in life: “I have one memory, from when I was seven years old, at summer camp,” she recalls. Using a small handheld digital camera, Tamez took a flash photo of a yellow flower in the daytime. The final image showed the flower in isolation, with a black background. “I had no idea how that was even mechanically possible,” she says, “but it was the first time that I had been a part of the conscious making of an image. I discovered that a photograph can become greater than the sum of its parts. Yes, there was the flash, and yes, there was a flower. But to me, the flower is mundane. The flower exists. But in isolating it and making it the subject of something, you make it worth stopping and looking at. [At the time] I did not know how to articulate that at all.”
“I was mystified by it,” Tamez continues, “And I think mystery often tells you where you need to go, even if you don't really understand it yet.” While photography remained her most intuitive practice, she explored an array of creative pursuits and passions from foreign languages to hairdressing throughout the rest of her childhood in Chicago. “I would go on trips to the bookstore with my father,” she recalls. “If I wasn’t in the foreign language section, I was sitting on the floor laying out all the fashion magazines. I was really dazzled by these characters, and the avant garde, and how spectacular all of these things were.”
“Steven Meisel, Steven Klein, Katie Grand, Patti Wilson, Sarah Moon, Franca Sozzani, and so many others — these people made me realize that, while I love the clothing, I love what can be done with it more,” she continues, citing Sozzani’s refrain about speaking through imagery as a way to transcend the barriers of language.
By the time she was a senior at her Catholic high school, Tamez knew that the world of fashion photography was calling her. So she booked a flight to Paris for fashion week and called in sick to school. With no contacts, no plan, and no invitation, Tamez managed to access numerous shows through a combination of white lies and charisma, even shooting Bella Hadid backstage in the lineup at Virgil Abloh’s 2018 show for Off-White. “This confidence came out of me that I didn't have in my real life,” she recalls. “You have to embody your vision, you just have to behave as such, and everything in your environment conforms to the way that you move.” That pivotal trip introduced her to a world of possibilities, one that she would remember as she moved to New York in the next year to attend Pace University.
