4 minute read
A photographer sees the light
Manuel Aguiar Peón stirs up some pozole, a traditional 39Mexican stew.
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Manuel’s partner is a YouTube star as well. Jorge Gastelum, above left, Gastelum, has nearly 350,000 subscribers on his home decor channel. Left, Manuel’s ring light turns his kitchen into a TV studio where he prepares an easy snack of Choco Krispi squares.
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Recetas que Inspiran » Instagram @manuelaguiarpeon
while studying business and hospitality.
“While at university my favorite courses always centered around cuisine, but at that point, I never seriously considered making of my passion a career,” recalls Manuel.
Aside from a love of cooking, Manuel began studying art at the age of 6 at the Malena Peón Fine Arts school in Itzimná, which belongs to his aunt.
After graduation, Manuel worked in wedding planning but found the industry to be extremely stressful. Using the contacts he made in the there, however, he decided to strike out on his own and join the growing event-planning field, decorating highly elaborate dance floors for social events such as weddings, anniversaries, and quinceaños.
But as the COVID-19 pandemic began to rage in Yucatán, work decorating dance floors soon dried up. Finding himself at home much more than he was accustomed to, Manuel observed as his partner Jorge Gastelum began to gain a serious amount of traction on social media with his “Inspira tu estilo,” or “inspire your style,” YouTube channel.
Manuel would help Jorge with several aspects of the production of his channel and routinely appear in the background, often times cooking or prepping meals. Before long, Jorge’s fans began to ask about Manuel and encouraged him in the comments to set up a YouTube channel of his own. “Jorge was very supportive right from the start and really encouraged me to get the channel up and running,” says Manuel. The first video on Manuel’s “Recetas que inspiran,” or “Recipes that Inspire,” YouTube channel was an audition video for “Master Chef México.” Though Manuel ultimately did not get on the show, he says the experience of uploading that first video was a way to kick off the channel. Since then, Manuel’s channel has grown to over 50,000 subscribers and his videos routinely hit over 100,000 views. Through building his channel, Manuel says he has discovered that he really enjoys inspiring and encouraging people to explore their creativity in the kitchen more than cooking up dishes at a restaurant or catering service. “Lots of people think they can’t cook, but this is simply untrue, everyone can cook,” says Manuel. The content on Manuel’s channel is quite varied but tends to mostly feature baking and Yucatecan cuisine. He also enjoys presenting recipes centered around themes including “cooking up a feast on a budget,” and “dinners in 15 minutes.”
At this point, Manuel is concentrating on continuing to hone his skills in the kitchen and with video production to offer his viewers a wide variety of quality content — as well as expanding his own menu, to the delight of his partner Jorge.
Capturing the light
How photographer Leo Espinosa interprets Yucatán’s architecture
BY MARÍA JOSÉ CISNEROS
Architectural photography has become its own art form. It might be as important as the building itself.
Photographer and university professor Leo Espinosa thinks this is an opportunity to capture the strength of a design and how the viewer experiences it. His path in photography began at a very young age, influenced by his two uncles who are prominent in the profession. One is José Antonio Romo from Morelia, founder of the Mexican Society of Photographers. The other is Víctor Rendón, from Mérida, who was dedicated to artistic photography in the ‘80s and ‘90s with Imagen Alterna. “Thanks to their influence I wanted to study photography,” says Leo, who graduated in 1998 from Anáhuac “I asked a lot, researched a lot, Mayab University with a degree in communications. “I was a foreigner because I came and wanted to know from Campeche,” says Leo. “I was the foreign student that the university what my clients adopted and I was always with my needed.” LEO ESPINOSA camera.” “The photography professor at the time, Eduardo Ávila, realized that I always carried my camera and a year after I graduated, the university invited me to teach,” Leo remembers. The next step was finding his specialty. Like a good comunicólogo, a term for describing someone who studied communications in Latin America, he experimented with different areas of photography until after three months of travel made him realize architecture the subject
Previous page and above: Leo Esponosa highlights Casa del Lago’s sharp angles. Built by TACO, the home is so-called because it is alongside a man-made canal in a golf course community in Mérida.
