Portfolio Category - Portrait Awards 2014

FACES Portraiture is about the invisible but irresistible feeling between photographer and subject, the way it pulls them together into making an image. In my experience, the result is determined by how and where I meet my subjects, what they are doing at that moment, or how they perceive their own role in the process as well as that essential truth about themselves that always remains at their core. In summer of 2011, I set up a makeshift studio in the courtyard of the Spanish Cultural Center in Antigua Guatemala. I used indigenous woven fabrics for backdrops, which I hung in a landscape of four hundred year old churches, eroded walls with washed out layers of pastel colors with a horizon line of volcanoes looking down the beautiful colonial city. People simply walked into the studio as they were, and I would catch the moment when they are willing to be photographed, not for a photojournalist or commercial photographer but simply for himself or herself. After asking for some basic personal information, I let my subjects take the lead, offering them a minimum of direction. It was a sort of performance and collaboration where I sought to be receptive to their desires and their energy and sense of excitement so that I could translate it photographically. Some days, I would leave the confines of the courtyard and venture out on the streets with my mobile studio. Among many others, I met an elderly couple who came to the cultural center for a holiday outing; a humble girl balancing a basket full of snacks to sell on foot around the city but with the face and self-confidence of Mayan princess. All of them were walking into my studio regardless of their age, gender, education, skin color, or occupation and shared a special moment with me. My deepest appreciation and gratitude goes out to each and every one of the 211 people who trusted me and agreed to trade a handful of their soul in exchange for one of my photographs.