Who you are

León, Nicaragua © Rosaverde

León, Nicaragua © Rosaverde

When one starts in photography, many people tells you that you need to put your heart into your work, that you need to find your own voice, your style… Bullshit for those like me always in desperate need of immediate answers. I would get mad at anyone saying ’you have to find your style’ simply because no one ever dared to explain to me the formulae to reach such goal.

At that time, I would look at my pictures and all I could think of was that they were showing nothing but the obvious absence of feelings, stories without a soul: facts to be forgotten.

Now, not sure how many years later, I am finally starting to sense where that style they talk about might be. Time goes by and, if your passion doesn’t die along the way, you suddenly become aware of certain patterns in your thoughts, in your behaviour and, eventually, in your pictures too.

There it is, that‘s why no one can rush you into it. It comes at your own pace, at your own understanding of life. But it turns out that, when it happens, a whole new world opens up: your pictures no longer seem to talk about what you see or where you are but more about who you are. It’s a slow process, of course, it doesn’t happen all of a sudden and, I imagine, one keeps going back and forth at every attempt to be honest at oneself. I also suspect that, the more you keep working at it, the more pictures you take, the closer you get to your uniqueness as a human being: your heart.

As for me, one day, looking back through my archive of photographs, I found a recurring topic… one that feels really close to my heart.