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One Shot
“When I arrived at their home, Magda Rodriguez (right) was sitting next to her children in the dark. She was a little depressed. It was her birthday and she had been without electricity and water for weeks due to Hurricane Maria. It is always sad to cover catastrophic events but this time it was happening in my country.”
Profile
My mother always had a camera in her hand. She took pictures of everything that happened in our family. The first camera I remember using was a Kodak 110-film camera, which she loved to use. I remember using this camera without film pretending to take photos of everything around me.
I believe in self-education, in seeking and learning about everything that catches your eye. So for me learning was about going out and shooting as much as I could.
I'm passionate about telling stories and wanted an outlet to express myself. Only photography has the "gift" of being able to stop time and turn moments into something for the next generations.
My first assignment was covering demonstrations in Puerto Rico against U.S. Navy maneuvers. A photographer gave me two rolls of black and white film. She told me: "show me what you can do with this". The next day I had my first publication and that's when I decided that I would be a photographer for the rest of my life.
An assignment that left a big mark on me was the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. That was a time when I questioned what life is about. So many deaths and too much suffering and pain for these people. It does not mean that others do not suffer it, but in that moment I had never witnessed such horror.
I love working on different themes within photography but my passion has always been projects focused on human rights issues.
Photojournalism is important because it is the purest and most accurate evidence that we exist. That at some point we were capable of loving, hating, helping, going back and resurrecting, not only as individuals, but as a society. Our work is the testament of our times.
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