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Why do I take photographs?

 

It's a means of expression that I enjoy, that gives free rein to my curiosity, allowing me to compose while capturing the magic of a moment. Lartigue used to say "I photograph to try to catch what cannot be caught".

 

I came to photography as part of my work in development cooperation, which led me to live with my family for thirty-five years in Latin America, Africa and Madagascar. The aim was to illustrate publications on the activities carried out with partner organisations to reduce poverty in rural and peri-urban areas, by documenting the situation and the initiatives of local players. This documentation was also used in training courses and experience-sharing seminars.

 

Gradually, through contacts with amateur and professional photographer friends and visits to exhibitions, I began to aspire to a more creative form of photography, where the importance is less to say "it's true" than "this is what I felt". Quite an apprenticeship. From then on, my passion for photography never left me.

Photography is rich of human encounters that have contributed a lot for me. Photography has often enabled me to accompany people on their ways and in their daily lives, with whom a bond of friendship was built up. Accepting to be photographed invites reciprocity, by allowing the photographs to be recreated in all their forms.

 

The great thing about photography, whatever the subject, is that it invites us to share.

 

Through my activities I have often been in direct contact with the misery of men and women and the actions of war and violence, but I have never picked up a camera to capture sadness and suffering. On the contrary, photography allows me to capture, with hope and dignity, the enchantment and diversity of the living world, preserving snatches of what I have witnessed and which are inexorably tending to disappear.

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