As a child, my father always made my brother and me carry a photo camera everywhere we go, so that we could capture the space and every moment we lived as a family. He explained that in this way we could tell our coming relatives how we lived, and how we spent time together in our environment.
At that time, I just followed his instructions without thinking any reason behind it. We used a Kodak color roll camera … but yes, I’m always was interested in taking black and white photos.
My father was my hero, but unfortunately, he passed away when I was very young. The most vivid memory I have of him is that apart from family photos, he always asked me to take pictures, almost as an obsession. According to his story, he wanted to make sure his grandchildren knew who he was, how he lived and how much he shared with us. Or so I understood it at that time. From these experiences, experience acquired and his great legacy, is where this passion that is in me, was born.
I am a lawyer by profession, graduated in Cali Colombia, from the University of Santiago de Cali in 2009. I am from Cartagena by birth, but from Cali in my heart, since I have lived here for 20 years. Due to my profession, I was always interested in social problems, my constant question it was always how I could improve the quality of life on a collective level, I wondered how I could practice my profession in a somewhat “heroic” way. What I needed, to enter the circle of trust of everyone, and thus be able to capture their true thoughts, points of view and emotions, then be able to get to the base of the problem and give the solution as a lawyer.
Today, I can say that I could test my legal capacities, I worked with the community and I could carry outimportant social works in my city. But… I could never reach that circle of trust with the people involved, that kept in my head as a constant reminder that I was missing something. Until one day the answer came to me … it was not reaching that circle of trust, it was not inquiring, and it was not being a political hero. It was just continuing with my father’s legacy. There, I understood his obsession with photographs. There I understood what was behind each photo
More than capturing a portrait or an image, it is capturing what people around the world feel. How they live, what their eyes see, and what their heart feels. My father’s teaching was that I could reach anyone through a camera. That a title, or a diploma was not enough to capture the basis of the problem and give it a solution. That my way of being a hero was showing the world, what is the reale world, told not by me, but by the millions of characters that inhabit it and the places that make it up.
I started studying photography as an art, and then I dared to change the concept, using only black and white.
So today, I can also say that being able to capture without the need for bright colors, the most vulnerable and sincere feeling of a being or a place, is what drives me, and being able to rebel to that person what his eyes say and nobody See, it is what gives me, and my father life, my hero. Being able to continue sharing his legacy today has no price or way to explain. Photography for me is life, it is passion, it is a legacy, and it is my need to show what truly is to be a superhero.
