This post is the fourth in a series exploring the work of five emerging Mexican street photographers. The series will include work from Nayeli Cruz Bonilla, Fermín Guzmán Martínez, Jair Cabrera Torres, Irving Cabrera Torres, and Alfredo Moreno. Mark Powell and Tom Griggs have curated and edited this project to give exposure to these young photographers. All five began their careers as students of Powell's in El Faro de Oriente in Iztapalapa, Mexico City.
The first post in the series featuring Cruz Bonilla can be found here, the second with Guzmán Martínez here, and the third with Cabrera Torres here.
This posts features the work of Irving Cabrera Torres. His work can be further explored on Flickr under the name "kafkiano."
Statement
My name is Irving Cabrera Torres. I'm 29 years old, I'm a photographer and I have been dedicated to photography since 2003 and have become a student of photojournalism. I got interested in this profession through an exhibition of a Mexican photographer from the 50s, 60s, and part of the 70s named Héctor García. His images struck me. It was an account of the streets of Mexico City from the perspective of an resident of this great metropolis.
I like to speak with images, to express myself through photography is the way I have enjoyed living the last seven years. Observing the world, recreating it, rediscovering myself and my environment are things that photography has given me.
The world of images is the universe that gives me shelter, it was the place where I found a future for myself; the opportunities that existed in the neighborhood where I grew up were very few and sometimes none. The neighborhood where I live gave me the best education for walking the streets without any fear, to face anything anywhere. On these streets the friends of the neighborhood and I graduated to fight for the length of our lives.
Now that I have my goals with photography a little clearer, the barrio seduces me with its aesthetic, with the smells, sounds, characters, shadows, texture, its dangerous atmosphere that at the same time results in the challenge to get out the camera and photograph friends and all the things that cross my eyes. Walking for hours under the sun or rain, taking risks just for the pleasure of finding a good photo is the best enjoyment a new day can give me.
Thanks to photography I was able to get excited about life, even if humanity is a lost cause. I want to be a photographic witness of this last era of humanity because the planet will not stand much longer the abuse that it is being given.
Photography is my life and the best emotional, occupational, and creative therapy that I could have. The district in Ermita Zaragoza located in Iztapalapa is one of the most marginalized and dangerous areas of eastern Mexico City. After having the luck to know photography I hope that other people like me will have the same joy that I'm living. The experiences photography has given me have been wonderful, from managing my own newspaper, working in media as a photojournalist on a national level and, best of all, meeting people from all areas of the city. The best of photography is to create an unexplored world.
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