Successful Stoners: Gastón Suaya, The High-Society Photographer Who Freed Himself With Weed

This special feature was made possible thanks to the Gabo Foundation and the Fund for Research and New Narratives on Drugs. You can read the original in Spanish on El Planteo.

Any VIP event in Buenos Aires, Argentina can be defined as good or bad depending on whether Gastón Suaya was there or not. Better known as Gato—the cat—this Argentinian photographer is a familiar face in Buenos Aires’ high society. He’s the kind of guy that most people love, a character with good energy, talkative, always sharing a smile and good humor with both familiar faces and complete strangers. Gato is a social animal. But his life could have been tangentially different. When he was little, Gastón suffered from bullying at school. He was an overprotected child in a religious family, always ready to comply with the traditional norms required by the bubble in which he grew up. 

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“I am a very Argentine man; I like meat and wine. I am also a cannabis man. I enjoy the party”, says Gastón, with a bon-vivant aura that characterizes him. “But I wasn't always like this. For several years, I was very withdrawn. At school they bullied me for being different from the rest of the group; I was kind of nerdy. I liked role-playing games and spent hours glued to my PlayStation. Mainly because my classmates drove me crazy.” Gastón studied in religious schools; one Benedictine and another run by the Opus Dei (a Catholic organization founded by Saint Josémaría Escrivá de Balaguer, strongly criticized by its former members, and reformed by Pope Francis in 2020). This was how his mother wanted to raise him; a quiet, judicious child, devoted to family and religion. However, he was always a creative and curious boy. Inevitably, his life would intersect with cannabis.

“My mom found out that I smoked because she received a call from the local police station; it was one of the agents. They told her I was in prison for public consumption”, says Gastón, laughing with some compassion for his mother, a traditional and demure lady who thought that he, the youngest of the family, was a little angel. “After 12 hours locked in a dungeon, they let me out. There, in the waiting room was my mother, crying. I was her spoiled baby. She had a very pure idea of ​​me and knowing that I now had a criminal record in Buenos Aires—and that it had been for consuming what in her eyes was a drug—made it worse. That day I stopped being my mother’s saint of choice. But no one ever said that you can’t be both a stoner and a saint.”

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El Gato has witnessed how the global and local perception of cannabis use has changed and that’s why he no longer keeps it a secret. "In Argentina, many people consume—it’s become normalized," says Gastón. “But 20 years ago, I was getting punched at school for using cannabis. They literally beat me up because I was seen as the worst thing that could happen to a family.” Over the years, cannabis has become more and more accepted in the country, in part because its neighbor Uruguay successfully legalized it (and also because the United States and Canada are ahead and have shown that the plant can be used as an industry). In 2020, President Alberto Fernández approved Law 27,350 which authorizes cultivation for medicinal purposes. That said, recreational use continues to be punishable under Law 23,737 (which could lead to a sentence of up to 15 years in prison). However, since 2009, thanks to a Supreme Court ruling, cannabis has been decriminalized for personal and private use. 

Gastón Suaya - Photographer - Argentina

The patriarchal structures that built the country have been collectively extinguished over the years, but in the case of Gato, also in a personal way. It was when he graduated from school and began to study film that he found a group of people with similar tastes to his, lovers of Tarantino and Kubrick, with whom he could share music, philosophies, and various joints. “The school was very structured, there was great Judeo-Christian pressure. But marijuana freed me from those moralisms,” says Gastón. “It was very clear when I entered the University and I began to break down all those prejudices. It could be me.” Unexpectedly, the real Gastón began to be liked by many people, and the popularity of the young photographer began to grow. He came to work with Urko Suaya—a relative of his—one of the best portrait artists in the country. The doors began to open and suddenly the Cat was being hired to work with big brands or asked to cover high-profile events, capturing portraits of Argentine personalities in their celebrations. 

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During the day, he began to mix commercial work with fashion projects, leaving the night hours to portray the elegant evenings and wild parties of the capital. The more flashes he fired, the more he interacted with artistic, intellectual, and well-connected people [there's something about vanity or the need to portray moments of partying that make social photographers the center of attention], many of whom happened to be cannabis consumers. In addition to his warm personality, people were impressed with his background, which includes working with Circus Studio in Milan (one of the most renowned photo studios). He made his way through the creme-de-la-creme to the point of joining the intelligentsia of his country. It wasn’t gratuitous that he was the official photographer of the Faena District opening party, an urban development by the eccentric Argentine businessman Alan Faena (an investment of one billion USD that took over four blocks from Miami Beach).

“I feel like a lot behind prohibition has to do with limiting the creativity [of many minorities who had been using cannabis, like the great jazzmen who were frequent users in the golden years of Harlem]. They made us feel that if you consumed it you were sinning, that it was an offense to your family, and that on top of that you were frying your brain,” says Gastón. “The reality is that we come from generations that repeated what they were told about drugs, without even questioning that information. For years we’ve been hiding behind the information that circulates, but most people never question it [for fear of offending the institutions, mainly the religious ones, that governed/govern us].” Gaston’s words are always loaded with love; He is the type of person who laughs at his misfortunes (and makes you laugh while at it). 

Talking to him, you still feel the innocence of that boy who was mistreated by his classmates, the one who hid behind his games and hobbies (Gastón received his first camera at age 12, a gift from his father). Fantasy and the art of cinema serve as a shelter between party and party. “I love Pulp Fiction and I recently rewatched The Big Lebowski. They are highly creative films with great aesthetics. Barry Lyndon is another film where every scene is a work of art,” says the photographer, speaking about the connection between cannabis and movie geniuses.

“I have seen these cinematographic works several times and each time I admire them more. I almost always do it with a joint in hand. I think that’s the only problem I have with the plant: I like to smoke while watching movies, but many times it relaxes me so much that I fall asleep.”

Illustration by @chyataller

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