BEYOND PHOTOGRAPHY
CULTURAL MANAGEMENT
An essential part of my work during the last decades has been the construction of cultural projects, most of them related to journalism and community:
The photo contest
POY LATAM
In 2011, together with my dear friend Loup Langton, we created the POY Latam photo contest, with the support of Pictures of the Year International. Quito, Fortaleza, San Miguel de Allende and Barcelona have been the venues for a contest that over the years has become the largest and most important in Latin America.
The magazine
REVISTA POY LATAM
During the 2020 pandemic, the POY Latam magazine (of which I am the general editor) was created with the intention of generating a reflection on the times we have now been living in, and to bring art and literature closer to journalism. It started as a project for the New York Times and became an independent space.
The books
THE EDITORIAL WORLD
I am the author of eight books and have been the editor of dozens of different books by other authors. I began this exploration under the guidance of Paco Valdivieso, one of Ecuador’s most respected publishers. As secretary of the Confederation of Latin American Graphic Industries (1992-1993), I immersed myself in the publishing world.
The workshops
SPREADING KNOWLEDGE
For decades I have dedicated myself to organizing workshops and seminars throughout Latin America, and have participated in many organized by other institutions and individuals: workshops on photography; creativity; resilience; construction of dialogue processes and participatory mechanisms.
Public cultural management
THE MINISTRY OF CULTURE OF QUITO
As Secretary of Culture of Quito (2015-2019), I was in charge of leading all areas of the city’s cultural management, including public policy, budgets, planning, educational processes, organization of events, fairs and festivals, leadership of museums, theaters, libraries, archives, and direction of the city’s editorial project. We decided that the two guiding principles of our administration would be gender and interculturality, that is, the celebration of our cultural diversity.
One of the first steps was to issue Resolution A015 under the guidance of the United Cities and Local Governments (CGLU). This resolution helped us rethink all the internal processes of the Secretary of Culture of Quito: the entire city programming was designed, and directors of cultural spaces were appointed through public calls and independent juries – methodologies that were also applied to the city’s major events.
We built public policy horizontally with theater guilds and the Kitu Kara people. We strengthened work with urban tribes and rural communities. Cultural communication was given importance, and a website was created that was fed by thousands of cultural managers in the city. The book “Quito Gestión Cultural,” written by several independent journalists, tells the story of our work at the helm of the Secretariat.
HIGHLIGHTS OF OUR EDITORIAL PROJECT
