Persona Grata

This is a selection of the series 'Persona Grata', portraits of Spanish speakers made in Casa Migrante, a cultural and legal aid center in Amsterdam. The photo sessions (in the open air, with no additional light) took place in August 2018. I am writing this note in February 2021, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. I made the Persona Grata portraits a little over two years ago and it seems to me that it was yesterday that we were in the courtyard of Casa Migrante talking, laughing and taking photos with friends, acquaintances and people passing by. But it was not yesterday but before the spread of the virus that has transformed the planet into a kind of war hospital. What it was is over and will not returns, but photography is a window that opens to the past and helps us understand it. And we all know that the quality of the future depends on the understanding of the past. I think a portrait shows the difference, the particularity of the portrayed and at the same time his / her belonging to a community and finally to all humanity. At the ends of the day we are all the same: clear and mysterious, incomparable and at the same time similar to others. Photography creates reality because it preserves the visible.