An Interview with Photographer Felix R. Cid

Felix R. Cid’s Sword of Damocles exhibits collages of photographs taken of crowds at marches and protests across the U.S. and Europe in 2017. In his pictures, Cid doesn’t give viewers much room to rest or breathe. He squeezes together countless, high-resolution photographs of protesters to create huge, human-sized prints that, from afar, look like abstract images or mosaics. The effect may be claustrophobic, but is no doubt energetic and eager. Along with the photographs, there’s one sculpture in Cid’s exhibit: a pile of Greco-Roman style statue remains wearing vibrant Mexican wrestling masks. Taken together, it seems like a warning for what the Trump presidency could bring: a civilization in ruin. 

I sat down with Cid at the Sunset Tower Hotel’s restaurant in West Hollywood the day after his opening. (He often used the words pictures and images to refer to his completed work, but didn’t once say the word collage.) He greeted me in a gray hoodie, his long black hair pulled back into a bun, and a silver Darth Vader ring on his finger that he occasionally knocked on the table for emphasis. 

—Timea Sipos

THE BELIEVER: I’m so happy that I got to see the work in person.

FELIX R. CID: Especially with the photos, you really need to. There has to be a reason why, in 2017, you see the photograph in person. You have to be able to see the details.

BLVR: Images of music festivals from your previous exhibit, X, are composed in a very similar way to those in The Sword of Damocles, but the contexts of the two are very different.

FRC: Are they?

BLVR: That’s what I want to get at. How is a protest against Trump similar to a music festival?

FRC:  I grew up during a transition from a dictatorship to a democracy, and I was surprised by how the youth in the West is now politically less involved. I remember when I was younger, and if you were among crowds, it would be to protest politically. In the States, it is more unusual than in Europe to see protests and rallies, but since the new administration, protests are happening all the time. When I made the Sword of Damocles, I was thinking: why are these young kids are here and not at a festival?

Younger generations live in this new world where physicality is not really that common. You interact much more online, but then all of a sudden, through the internet, real events are possible in ways they couldn’t be before. It happens much faster, much bigger, and suddenly here’s all this touch...