WHO?
My name is Andrés Ríos Fierro. I am from Bogotá, Colombia. In 2017, I was working as a bike messenger in New York. My natural reaction to the city was to start taking photos of the things that caught my eye.
WHAT?
Since I was always on the street for my job that is what I began to photograph. In the beginning, there wasn’t much thought behind what I was photographing — I just photographed whatever caught my eye. But I soon realized how interested I was in the different characters throughout New York, and began to focus my attention on the different interactions that I saw.
I then moved back to Colombia in 2018, and I started taking photos on the street there too. A place that I thought was so familiar to me, I all of the sudden saw differently. It was in this moment that I began to realize how photography was beginning to change my perception and the way I see and interact with the world.
WHERE?
Prior to the pandemic, all of my photographs were made in the street. I never even thought about photographing anywhere else. Once the pandemic hit, I was back in Colombia and the lockdown restrictions were so strict that I wasn’t allowed to photograph on the street. To satisfy my need to photograph, I began photographing my family. This opened a whole new world to me. I now photograph everywhere and everyone.
WHEN?
I never know when, and that’s why I always have my camera.
WHY?
The camera is what I need to go through life. It helps me be aware and appreciate the world around me, and who I am. It just makes the mundane of everyday life fun when you have a camera. In the end, it gives meaning to the little things in life.
