When Mexican photographer-writer Arturo Soto arrived in the city of Oxford to undertake his PhD at the University of Oxford, it was during a time of high tension: Brexit was fresh, the “outsider” was under scrutiny, and the rich mythologies of the city seemed at odds with its more ordinary realities. His photobook A Certain Logic of Expectations (2021) offers a quietly subversive view of Oxford, one that sidesteps the spires, the postcard images and instead roams the under-acknowledged corners of British academia, town & gown divides, migration, housing, identity and place.

At walk · listen · create, we recently hosted Soto, who unpacked how the project came about, what he sought to show, and why his outsider status as a Mexican in Britain during this era mattered. Below is a write-up of that event, enriched with additional context about his background, the book, and the cultural moment that frames it.

From Mexico-US border to Oxford

Soto was born in the border region between Juárez (Mexico) and El Paso (USA), but grew up in Mexico City. Earlier in his career he studied in the United States and the UK: an MFA in Photography at the School of Visual Arts in New York, an MA in Art History at University College London, and ultimately a PhD in Fine Art from Oxford’s (Ruskin) School of Art. 

As he explained in the event:

“I have had the privilege of living in different cities … I think I can bring a comparative eye to Oxford.”

Indeed, Oxford, for Soto, was unlike any city in which he had previously lived: Mexico City, Savannah (GA), New York, Panama. It possessed an almost mythical cultural weight, reinforced by the enduring imagery of spires and academic tradition. But Soto’s interest was very much in that which lies outside the myth.

Why Oxford? And why this book?

Soto’s original doctoral project was meant to focus on the US–Mexico border. However:

“My supervisor suggested that because I wasn’t going to be photographing constantly … I should … take on something else that I could work on regularly … since I was going to be in Oxford constantly.”

Thus began a process in which he walked the city, photographed it, thought about walking as practice, and slowly knitted together what became A Certain Logic of Expectations. The book’s publisher puts it succinctly:

“A counter-narrative of the British city of Oxford that resists the visual imperatives of its ancient university.”

Soto clarifies his aims:

“If you’ve been to Oxford, or if you’ve heard even about Oxford, you probably equate it with its university … and … I think that tends to be a mistake, because the city and the university are not the same thing.”

In other words, his objective was not to produce yet another glorified image of Oxford’s architecture or its elite tradition, but to walk, observe, notice what often goes unremarked: social housing, independent shops, residential peripheries, traces of Brexit, the everyday urban life outside the tourist gaze.

Form mirroring content

One of the clearest signs of Soto’s rigorous approach lies in how the book is structured. He chose two analogue cameras: a Hasselblad for square format (used for university-buildings but depicted in an unconventional way) and a Fuji 6×9 system for rectangular frames (used for exteriors outside the city centre). The square vs rectangular distinction is more than aesthetic: it visually maps two registers of Oxford; the institutional/university side and the everyday urban side.

“Once I started to define the kinds of pictures that I was interested in … I really tried… having those pictures say something about the time that I was living in. And so, Brexit was happening … I’m a foreigner. … the perspective of a foreigner. … I found that they weren’t so keen in having a foreigner depict their own city.”

And Soto’s approach to text and image:

“Images come with a promise, words with a compromise… The photographs and the text kind of flow parallel to each other, without explaining each other or reducing one to the other.”

Thus, the book is neither a photo-essay with captions nor a documentary piece in the traditional sense. Instead it is a hybrid: fragments of text, observational images, subjective walking notes.

Soto also pointed out how he would walk between 12 and 3 pm (shooting on film ISO 100), accepting the limits of his equipment, using them to define his process. The decision not to include people in the images (waiting for the streets to clear) further emphasizes his concern with place itself, rather than the human narrative.

Oxford in context

Soto’s perspective is sharpened by being “other”. He’s not British, he’s neither purely “town” nor “gown”, and he lived in Oxford during the aftermath of Britain’s 2016 referendum to leave the European Union. He describes a “looming presence of Brexit” in the book; signage, conversations, everyday moments that take on political charge:

“The choices were, to me, so obvious … Britain should have remained in the European Union … yet … It was a big shock when the Brexit vote turned out to go in the direction … I still felt it.”

By placing that internal feeling of “foreignness” at the centre of his reflection, he casts the city in a new light: the elite university buildings, the student rituals, the independent businesses, the migrant-run shops, the housing estates, the iconic streets and the lesser seen lanes. The book doesn’t denounce, but it invites reflection. One reviewer puts it well:

“The camera brings the otherwise unseen Oxford into focus; his crisp, clear images highlight its absolute ordinariness.”

Another context: discussions of town-and-gown in Oxford are longstanding. The city historically bears an uneasy relationship between the University and local residents, especially those out-side the student bubble. Soto remarks:

“While I am a member of the university, I only have full access to my college. … It is understandable that those who live here who do not have access to any of these buildings feel alienated from such a significant part of their city.”

And elsewhere:

“Oxford is so small, it is easy to feel you have seen it all after exploring the centre. But the wealth of histories embedded in the prominent places, as much as in the hidden corners, guarantees that there will always be room for surprises.”

Walking, photography, and the infra-ordinary

One of the motifs that recurs is walking. For Soto, walking in Oxford was part of the methodology. He distinguished walking to make pictures versus walking to think. He described deliberately going out in daylight, without tripod, navigating film limitations, waiting for streets to clear, discovering what he could encounter rather than what he had predetermined. He invoked the French writer Georges Perec (whom he cites as an inspiration) and his concept of the infra-ordinary, the everyday banalities that we habitually pass by.

This choice of process serves both form and meaning: the images are empty (devoid of people) and allow the architecture, streets, objects, signs to hold space. A lonesome trolley, a billboard, shop frontage, a deflated balloon, all these become signifiers of feeling, history, transition. One reviewer describes it:

“[The work] disrupts the usual rendering of the tri-cultural city of gown, town and tourists,” reframing how Oxford is portrayed

What this outsider sees, and what insiders might not

During the Q & A, a participant noted how many of the scenes in Soto’s book could occur in other British cities (Brighton, Hull, York) and asked: what is unique about Oxford? Soto responded that part of what struck him was the specificity of scale, history and density. And yet, the very features that made Oxford unique also made its “ordinary” zones more noticeable. That is to say, the “unique” thing not be spectacular architecture or tourist imagery, but the way everyday spaces, materials, economies and histories interlace.

What next?

Soto explained that his next projects are shifting focus, though staying within his interest in the urban landscape. He is working on a book about a neighbourhood in Mexico City where he grew up. Similar in spirit but perhaps more autobiographical and longer in its textual form. He is also writing a primer/book on the photographic urban landscape as art history rather than personal project. He remains committed to film photography, stating:

“I enjoy photography very much … I like not knowing, I like having a finite number of shots, I like the uncertainty … For me … act of making the pictures is very important … For better or worse, I don’t enjoy using digital cameras.”

Why this matters

In a moment when cities, and particularly the UK in the post-Brexit era, are defined by questions of identity, migration, inclusion, memory and myth, Soto’s A Certain Logic of Expectations offers a measured, reflective, subtly political photographic account. It reminds us that a city like Oxford is more than dream-spires and tourist brochures; it is also bricks and social housing blocks, independent shops and migrant-run frontages, voting divisions and silent streets. His outsider status is precisely his strength, able to both belong and observe from a slight distance.

For readers and walkers alike, his work invites a different kind of engagement: to put aside the iconic image and instead look sideways at the city. To walk with attention. To record the infra-ordinary.