About Rafael
When I’m editing a photograph or dreaming up a concept to shoot, I aim to capture a look that is beautiful, meaningful, emotional, and story telling. But I also strive for a feeling in myself that comes either when I take the photo or when I’m editing or both. I get excited. I know I have something good. That feeling is necessary for me to feel comfortable sharing the work. And as I progress, I get better at my craft and I become more strict about what gives me that feeling within my own work. I never want my best work to be 10 years old. At most I want it to be 2 years old and always getting better and evolving. Keeping this in my mind and keeping my standard in mind for the feelings I want to have, helps me to keep pushing.
I could tell you the places I’ve traveled. I could talk about the campaigns, galleries, books, publications, money made. And anything that would make sure you know that I qualify as a professional, impressive photographer. But I really want you to know Rafael. Why I do what I do. What makes me strive for beauty and feeling in every photograph I publish. Give you a sense of who I really am.
I will start by mentioning one of the heavier things that occurred in my life. When I was 16 I lost my older sister to suicide. We were very close and even though I always felt comfortable talking about what happened, it was very clear looking back that it was incredibly traumatic and effected my life in a million ways. It was that year that I dropped everything and made it my goal to do things that made me happy. There was 2 things that made me happier than anything else. Art and drugs. I would go on a 6 year bender of self-abuse until getting sober at 23. That year also made me realize that life is short and that I didn’t want to waste time doing things I was not passionate about. I dove deeper into art and it was clear that I wanted to be an artist but it would still take five more years (age 21) until I would actually pick up a camera and another year after that until I would decide that photography was the thing I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I had zero direction zero mentorship and zero guidance in this field even though I did seek it out quite a bit. I was running in all sorts of direction with my photographic work and my mental health but no clear path was in sight.
After a year of shooting almost every day, I attended a photographic lecture of a well-known New York photographer named Joshua Crystal and he said that when you hold the camera enough and photograph enough even if you don’t think you have a photographic identity you do and your subconscious starts to become your conscious in your photographs. I looked at my work and it became clear more clear than ever that I was speaking to an audience that also suffered from depression, anxiety, thoughts of suicide, drug use, and certain topics that I felt weren’t being talked about enough. I dove deeper into this identity and further away from commercial work, lifestyle work, and weddings. I couldn’t bring myself to do it, (at least not often) and later I would beat myself up for not going after more well-paid work or paving a very firm commercial identity for myself to make a living as a photographer. I now know that the events that happened when I was 16 made me feel like there were more important things to make work about then lifestyle or editorial work. This really set the tone for everything that I do today. Even within the commercial space this has evolved into an identity and a style which is entirely my own. I get to have that which is amazing and beautiful. Instead of creating depressing work or happy work my aim is to create beautiful work filled with emotions coming from a place of realness and rawness. My goal is to continue to create this work in fine arts spaces using the camera as my main medium, but also to continue to use this identity I’ve created and adapt this into the commercial space as I continue to create editorial high fashion and album art for musicians.