2190 days of light

There are 2190 days in 6 years. Everyday in that time I took a photograph from wherever I was in the world, carrying around my iPhone, documenting my days and creating a visual diary of my life. These are some of the faces that shared their time with me. For me, this is a self-portrait of my life. I am an immigrant — born in El Salvador and raised in a bilingual home in New York City. I’ve always felt a yearning to belong, alongside a persistent feeling of being caught in-between places, languages, and even contradictory senses of self. My work focuses on documenting these states, mental and physical, north and south, as well as the transitions that take me towards them and away. My photographs don’t necessarily provide answers, but instead offer up a visual map capacious enough to include all these different places and states of being. Themes of transience are countered by recurring engagement with the elements that ground us: earth, water, air, fire, ether, the body and, especially, light — my only constant companion. In these in-between states, these luminous transitions, my photographs are born.