Photos by Rosa Guerrero
Rosa Guerrero walks up to where I’m sitting at Under the Volcano. “Stick out your hand,” she says. I palm up to her demands, and she sinks a heavy single-lens reflex with flash into my hand. “That’s what I carry around every night,” says the photographer known as rosaposer to any Hands Up Houston message-board regular.
Admittedly, I used to truck around a SLR of my own, but the reminder was pretty, well, heavy - these days I usually tote a small, light digital camera.
Guerrero is somewhat a staple in the local scene. Her small frame is often seen weaving through the crowds to get the perfect shot - sometimes for the Press, but more often for her own 'zine/blog, Ditchwater.
“Generally you feel a crescendo – wherever you are – like something’s about to happen and the moment I raise my [camera] is when I feel like that crescendo is about to come,” she says.
More often than not, the developments, as it were, are disappointing.
“Sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn’t. I have about 99 percent dud shots,” she says. But the one-percent’s worth are well worth the wait and the binding.
Guerrero is releasing her second volume of selected photographs from (mostly) local and national shows at today’s release party for Ditchwater's second issue.
It’s nice to see someone releasing an offline publication – especially a photo zine, an idea that was once pretty common in punk rock. The Internet no doubt provides scores of ways for people to publish content (you know, like event previews), but it’s always nice to have a collection of moments to put on the coffee table or bookshelf with pages that turn instead of load.
“It’s absolutely tactile – that’s what I love about it,” Guerrero says, adding that it’s also nice to be positive people are looking. “If you have 50 zines in 50 different people’s hands then you know it’s being distributed and it’s being looked it.”
You heard that right, music fans. There are only 50 of these bad boys, so make sure you get to Sound Exchange if you want one.
Guerrero will be on hand to answer questions and collect compliments, but not your dollars.
“I’m not even getting any money; I get in-store credit,” she says and laughs. “It’s like one bad habit feeding another.” – Dusti Rhodes
7-9 p.m. tonight at Sound Exchange, 1846 Richmond. Pasadena's Chocolate Crucifix ("Choke Yourself") performs.
