Juan Toro
About 28 years ago, when I told my father that I wanted to be a photographer, he exclaimed, after a silence, “What are you going to live on? It was the answer of an intelligent man, who mentally drew a map of what my future could be. So I ended up attending the School of Social Communication at the Central University of Venezuela
I took several courses, with Professor Ricardo Ferreira, (1994), and with photographer Nelson Garrido (2002-04), at La ONG. I worked for local publications, being part of a group of photographers who met under the name of Contratipo. Since 2008 I started a project with a journalist friend about violence, and since then I have dedicated myself to registering it, to following its steps. Thus was born Nadie se atreva a llorar…Dejen que ría el silencio, a work that brings together common crime scenes that are part of the daily lives of Venezuelans. This work was part of PhotoEspaña and was first exhibited at the Instituto Cervantes in Madrid in 2011, as part of Peso y Levedad. Two years later, it would become the first individual exhibition, in the spaces of La ONG, Caracas, Venezuela.
Plomo would then be a new approach to the theme, this time from the objects. This work consists of photographing bullets that have cut down the lives of Venezuelans, it tells us about the diversity of weapons that circulate freely in the streets. It was presented in the spaces of El Anexo in 2013, in Caracas. It was then shown as part of a group exhibition called Levedades Insostenibles at the PHEED.edu Gallery in Barcelona, Spain.
Fragmentos, is the third part of this catalogue about the violence, and the political chaos that Venezuelan society is going through. Under the title Expedientes it was presented in the spaces of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Zulia, Venezuela in 2015.
At present I continue to explore the consequences of violence in Venezuelan society. My father stopped accompanying me 11 years ago.