The Gingerbread House

Roberto Tondopó (1978)

Adolescence in the family home, with portraits of two children, shows the fragility of identity formation in contemporary Mexican society.

Description

The Gingerbread House (Spanish: Casita de turrón) by Roberto Tondopó was created between 2008 and 2015 in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas, Mexico. The project documents his niece and nephew's transition from childhood to adolescence within the confines of the photographer’s childhood home.

Emerging amid a broader movement in Mexican photography toward conceptual and personal narratives, Tondopó’s work probes the tensions of domestic life in a country marked by hidden social repression and normalized violence. Drawing inspiration from fairy tales and psychological literature, Tondopó explores the home as both a nurturing space and a claustrophobic environment. His depiction of Andrea and Ángel captures adolescence as a state of emotional imbalance.

Visually, the series blends theatrical staging with observational portraiture. Color dominates, emulating the Kodachrome tones of family albums produced by Tondopó’s father, conjuring a bittersweet mood of nostalgia intertwined with unease. Household textures—curtains, clothing, wallpaper—anchor the work in a personal archive, while the children’s poses evoke both innocence and disturbance. The cinematic framing furthers a sense of narrative ambiguity, aligning the project with the psychological thriller genre, where physical space often mirrors emotional states.

Reception emphasized selective markers: PHotoEspaña showings (2013; 2015 Develar y detonar), Photoquai (2013), and the Taylor Wessing exhibition (2011). The 2015 La Fábrica photobook—co-published with Hydra + Fotografía, Fundación Televisa, and FONCA—plus the Tierney Fellowship (2011) positioned the series within contemporary Latin American practice.

Behind the work

Tondopó’s father, though affectionate, was known as a "domestic tyrant" who fostered a claustrophobic atmosphere at home. Many images in The Gingerbread House reconstruct this oppressive setting, where his niece Andrea and nephew Ángel spent long afternoons in a house the artist remembers as "haunted by darker memories."

The work draws inspiration from the Grimm brothers' fairy tale "Hansel and Gretel," which Tondopó uses to frame the children's journey of self-discovery, their struggle against adversity, and their "uncontrollable impulses to destroy that which gives them shelter".

Quotes by the photographer

"I wanted to recreate the experience in such a way that an adult spectator could experience it as a child would... how the child would reconstruct everything that was not directly understandable.

"My father loved us inordinately, but he was a domestic tyrant. We lived in fear... His was a suffocating, domineering, over-protective sort of love."

"When I first began to travel, I realised how difficult it was for me to make decisions for myself. I had grown up in a closed world of half-truths, charged with violence."

"One memory led to another… This brought repressed events to the surface of consciousness and the photographic act became one of exorcism or, perhaps, atonement."

Tags and context

Credits: Alasdair Foster, Talking Pictures (project nomination). Suggest an Edit