To change his life, Ryan Moreno Si’al picked up a camera.
Then he headed toward his past on the Tohono O’odham Nation. There, he reframed his previous life.
Ryan, now 23, graduated from Flowing Wells High School and time in the foster care system left him wandering and questioning his life’s purpose. Ryan wanted to “move away from all the bad stuff” so he enrolled at Pima Community College and Tohono O’odham Community College.
“A photography class at Pima led me to the artist path. I realized you can borrow a camera and it started from there,” Ryan said. “When I decided to go back to school, it was a big step for me because I never thought I would go back to school.”
Classes led to a love for photography and now his own exhibition. “Phantasm” will run through November at the Amerind Museum’s Fulton-Hayden Memorial Art Gallery in Dragoon, about 70 miles east of Tucson off Interstate 10. On Saturday, May 24, Ryan will discuss his photography at 11 a.m. Admission is free.
Ryan’s work thoughtfully considers light and space from his subjects while looking at landscapes that humans create and destroy.
We had five questions for the visual artist, who is also studying engineering:
Q: What did it feel like to pick up a camera?
A: Initially, I didn’t know what the buttons did and I was so confused and it was so foreign to me. I couldn’t comprehend it. But then the class started going, I decided to learn all these skills. The professor was telling me about how it worked and the history and I fell in love with it.
Q: What do you aim to convey with your photos?
A: I decided to take pictures on the reservation and talk about how life is there and evoke a sense of what humans can create and what humans can destroy. A lot of my photos are of how empty and how abandoned the reservation is and how lonely it is and I wanted to reflect that … and have a different perspective on my view of the world and how I kind of frame the pictures and how the composition is — it kind of has a meaning behind it and it shines. The black and white vs. the color photos have a different meaning behind them: The black and white is on purpose and the colors are on purpose. I wanted to reflect the two different relationships.
Q: How do you escape the world?
A: I like hiking and going on walks with my dog, Kayenta, a 1.5-year-old shepherd mix. I connect my brain to music and see how that works, playing the piano. I like taking a drive on the Catalina Highway, driving on Mount Lemmon and going up there with the dog and looking out into the valley.
“Phantasm” exhibit, talk
Where: Amerind Museum’s Fulton-Hayden Memorial Art Gallery in Dragoon, Ariz.
When: May 24 to Nov. 30
What: Discussion of work by Ryan Moreno Si’al, 11 a.m. to noon on Saturday, May 24
Cost: Free
Q: What do you hope people take from the exhibit?
A: What I want people to reflect on is ‘What do the photos mean to them?’ It’s about perspective. What do the photos mean to them — rather than me telling them.
Q: What’s next for you?
A: I never thought I would be in an exhibit. Where I come from, not a lot of success happens and I just appreciate and take pride in it. I am going through the moment in life and trying to get past all the math (classes) right now.
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