Photography
Sariñana has exhibited his work nationally and internationally, including at the Aperture Gallery, FOCUS photo l.a., Photoville, and the Griffin Museum of Photography. He has also had solo exhibitions for his series, Prosopagnosia, and Image of Structure.
He has received accolades from the Sony World Photography Awards, Photolucida Critical Mass, and Latin American Fotografía, Sariñana’s photographic work has been featured by Apple and published widely in periodicals such as Black & White Magazine, Silvershotz, and PDN Magazine.
He has written articles on the intersection of photography, neuroscience, and memory for PetaPixel and has given lectures on these topics at Trinity College in Dublin, Northeastern University, and Flashpoint Boston.
The Council for the Arts at MIT has awarded Sariñana grants for photographic projects bridging the arts and sciences. He is also the recipient of the Mass Cultural Council Arts Grant, Cambridge Arts Council Art, and the Somerville Arts Council City arts grant.
Image of Structure
The Stata Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a monumental building, saturated with colors, that juts out in every direction. By capturing the structure in monochrome, I deconstructed this architectural work, flattened it, and transformed it into a graphical form. My aim is to pull the viewer into a surreal, disembodied space, without completely breaking from rational observation. This work was born out of a radical shift in my perception and emotion as I conducted my neuroscientific research at the Institute, where I had a direct view of the Stata Center.
Prosopagnosia
Using the circular frame, I telescope back in time to reconcile distinct representations of the past and present self. These portraits build to, but ultimately lack, the detailed information necessary to find whom I’m looking for. I aim to bring the viewer into my tense dreamscape where I can search, but I fail to see.
We have two different lives, one while awake, building connections between neurons in the brain, and one while asleep, where we are losing them. The ebb and flow of these connections are the architectural dynamics of memory. The awake and sleeping brain seems to be in a desynchronized battle.
Photos are thought of as placeholders for memories, but what if, instead, they represent the degradation of a memory that we seek to have but can’t access?
Representation of Hidden Communication
Neuroscience is a pop-culture fixation, but the public knows little about how science is done, who does it, or exactly why it’s essential. One consequence of opaque research is the inability to see those who make new findings, their personal stories, and their motivations to help reveal the complexity of the nature we are imbued by.
These images were captured with a compact large format camera using experimental polaroid type instant film. The opaqueness of the positive (left) represents the raw data collected by scientists on their quest to understand the brain. The inverted negative (right) represents how scientists reveal the mind by filtering data, beautifying imagery, and removing unwanted but captured information.
This project was funded by the Council for the Arts at MIT.
Building 46 - The Department of the Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts of Technology. The late Charles Correa was the lead designer for the building.
The Atrium - Scientists mingle in the atrium after lectures from visiting professors. The atrium is usually clear of people as scientists conduct their research.
The Lion's Den - An empty seminar room where visiting professors come to give the latest updates on their research. It’s been said before that presenting at MIT is akin to a lion’s den.
Reading Room - A reading room flooded with natural light for chance encounters to exchange ideas and for scientists to socialize after talks.
AZA Allsop received his PhD at MIT and medical training at Harvard Medical School. Allsop was born in Brooklyn, NY, and grew up in Trinidad and Tobago before moving to Cambridge to study the brain circuitry of social cognition. Allsop’s findings suggest that there are encoded circuits in the brain to learn by observing others, which may play a fundamental role in understanding the feelings of others. In addition to pursuing a medical degree and PhD, Allsop is an accomplished jazz musician.
Caitlin Vander Weele comes from a small German tourist town, Frankenmuth, Michigan where it is Christmas year-round. Her PhD focused on the projection-defined circuits in the prefrontal cortex that encode information about positive and negative events. Her research has led to finding brain regions that play a crucial role in generating feelings of isolation. Vander Weele is now the Founder & CEO of Stellate Communications.
Steve Ramirez was born and raised in Boston, but his immediate family comes from El Salvador. After receiving his neuroscience degree at Boston University, Ramirez attended the Brain and Cognitive Sciences PhD program at MIT. Ramirez may best be known for his work on inserting false memories into mice with his collaborator Xu Liu. He now runs his own lab at Boston University.
Nancy Padilla was born and raised in Puerto Rico and attended music school where she specialized in piano and cello. She became interested in how the brain allows one to experience music emotionally and memory recall. Ultimately, Padilla obtained her PhD in neuroscience from Columbia University and conducted her postdoctoral training at MIT, where she studied the role of estrogen on the brain circuitry of anxiety behaviors. She is now an Assistant Professor at the University of Florida, College of Medicine.
Rodrigo Garcia was born in Boaco Nicaragua, but moved to the United States due to the civil and political unrest that resulted from the Iran-contra affair. He is now a postdoctoral associate and studies astrocytes -- one of a type of non-neuronal cells called glia that make up about half all cells in the human brain. Garcia is investigating astrocytes contribute to information processing in the visual cortex.
Rachel Cuozzo is an MIT alumna from the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. Cuozzo, Born in New York, grew up South Florida. As a student, she studied the parabrachial nucleus (PBN) of the brain stem. The PBN is a brain structure crucial for maintaining consciousness. She became interested in neuroscience in high school after being enamored by the anatomy and beauty of the human body.
Anna Beyeler is from the town of Tourliac, France. After studying the spinal cord at the University of Bordeaux, where she received her PhD, she switched her focus to studying the neural circuitry of the hippocampus. Anna studies the amygdala -- a brain region that’s important for infusing positive or negative emotions into experiences -- known as valence. Her work can help in understanding mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety. She now leads her own lab in Boudreaux.
Shruti Muralidhar is from India. She finished her PhD at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland. From Switzerland, she began postdoctoral research at the University of Utah. Muralidhar continued her postdoctoral work in the Nobel prize-winning lab of Susumu Tonegawa at MIT, studying learning and memory. Now, Muralidhar is a research scientist at Deep Genomics.
Tomás Ryan is from a small market town called Dungarvan in Country Waterford, Ireland. He completed his undergraduate degree at Trinity College Dublin. He moved to the University of Cambridge in the UK for his PhD before coming to MIT to study memory and amnesia. Ryan's findings show that amnesia is not about losing memories but rather the inability to access seemingly lost memories. He is now a Assistant Professor at Trinity College Dublin.
Stereotaxic Setup in Faraday Cage - The microscope shown here is used to perform surgeries that allow neuroscientists to use laser light to turn a subset of brain networks on and off. The technique above is called optogenetics
Physiology Rig - A sophisticated electrophysiology setup to turn on or off very specific subcircuits in the brain -- neuroscientists can identify the neural circuitry that underlies how the brain bridges two independent events in time, that is, associative learning.
2-Photon Microscopy – A microscope to study the function of astrocytes, one of a type of non-neuronal cells called glia that make up about half all cells in the human brain. This machine is used to investigate how astrocytes contribute to information processing in the visual cortex.
Lab Bench - A classic lab bench, messy from experimentation, filled to the brim with solutions, salts, and sometimes neurotoxins.
Surface and Consciousness
It can be challenging to find beauty in urban environments. This series speaks to the need to escape city life's sensory and psychological confines. These images are reflections from pools of water that have gathered atop of concrete or asphalt, which contrasts the abrasiveness of industrialization and the tranquility of nature.
Between Nothing
My goal is to pull the viewer's eyes in closely, for the retina to project visual information directly to the imagination. I want to take the audience to the space between sensation, fantasy, and emotions to find something we may be looking for.
