3rd place
bronze star award
Gabriel de Camino
costa rica 
title
Strategies to defend me from myself
Later my brother began to work teaching swimming while studying physiotherapy. He taught children, babies, the elderly, and disabled people. He passionately told me what teaching meant for him. The most fascinating detail was to hear him talk about water and how this element gave lightness and mobility to the bodies of disabled people. He helped all people equally. His passion, patience, sensitivity and tenderness were the traits I most admired in him. His vision of the other people made me observe my partial blindness as a strength. It made me appreciate myself, give me respect as a person, and it made me realize that I must make my own way to help others without wanting to be like him physically.
Based upon this experience I made a series of portraits of people who surround me, most of them university classmates and friends that I admire. I think of them as people who float in water and can move freely, they are innocent, free of prejudices, eager to learn.
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entry description
Since I was little I always felt a great admiration for my older brother, Pablo. He represented an important male role to follow, we were best friends and he never left me aside. Later on during our adolescence, I appreciated him as someone strong, brave, athletic, self-confident, with great ability to talk to women, and especially handsome. I admired him so much that soon my brotherly love turned into envy. In my view, he was perfect and the more I tried to look like him the more I despised myself for being different. I was not particularly strong, neither athletic nor especially brave and I had lost sight in my left eye at age 8, thus I thought I would never be as handsome as he was.Later my brother began to work teaching swimming while studying physiotherapy. He taught children, babies, the elderly, and disabled people. He passionately told me what teaching meant for him. The most fascinating detail was to hear him talk about water and how this element gave lightness and mobility to the bodies of disabled people. He helped all people equally. His passion, patience, sensitivity and tenderness were the traits I most admired in him. His vision of the other people made me observe my partial blindness as a strength. It made me appreciate myself, give me respect as a person, and it made me realize that I must make my own way to help others without wanting to be like him physically.
Based upon this experience I made a series of portraits of people who surround me, most of them university classmates and friends that I admire. I think of them as people who float in water and can move freely, they are innocent, free of prejudices, eager to learn.
about the photographer
25 year old Costa Rican Photographer, filmmaker, illustrator.back to gallery
