MY PHOTOGRAPHIC RESUMÉ IN A NUTSHELL

When I was 10 years old, I started taking pictures with a Kodak Brownie Box Camera.  While studying journalism, I took creative photography as well as a photojournalism course which I nearly flunked; the teacher didn’t like my style. Just before leaving Montana for South America in 1969, I spent my whole summer’s earnings on a Canon SLR with a single lens.

I developed my first rolls of Tri-X 400, or any other B&W film I could get ahold of with Godfried Hirtz in Quito, but he soon tired of this and began to show me how to develop my own rolls.  I bought a second hand enlarger, and with a group of friends, we transformed a bathroom in Riobamba into a darkroom.

In the ‘80’s, I became a member of Yana Yura, the photographic branch of the Casa de la Cultura.  We met every 15 days or so under the critical eye of Hugo Cifuentes and were expected to give our opinion of others’photographs; these sessions were invaluable to me on technical and creative levels.  We also organized the first national photographic events with international judges from Latin American countries like Mexico and Cuba; winners were awarded worthy prizes.  During this period, I won three national prizes, two with the Casa de la Cultura and the other with the Superintendent of Banks.

I was invited to curate the Ecuadorian exposition at the 1992 Houston Fotofest, one of the first photographic events in the World to feature Latin American photography on a broad scale, thanks to the efforts of Fred Baldwin.

I also had the opportunity to know ecuadorian photographers such as Bodo Wuth, Dr. Kaplán, María Teresa García and Camilo Luzuriaga, among others, and from that time on, I have dedicated myself to non-stop creative photography.

I was loosely associated with the photography department at Florida International University under the direction of Bill Maguire for several years and taught third level photography and the history of photography for a couple of years at the Centro de Imagen de la Alianza Francesa in Quito.