Raul Gutierrez: XINJIANG

These pictures were part of a show titled Travels Without Maps covering a broad swath of Western China in short the non Chinese part of China, but the truth is most of my photography projects could have that title. It is when we are off the map of the known that life gets interesting whether you are on the other side of the world or around the corner. I photograph to remember not just the facts of a person or a place, but to try to hold on to the spaces in-between, the things words are no good for.

I am most interested in the way stations one finds between cultures, places where you see the past and the future simultaneously. It is a perspective I find disorienting, tragic… occasionally magnificent. I try to make images that show these places before they tilt one way or the other, while they are still suspended between worlds.