Presentation
They are children and young people paired with the same dramatic fate. Many of them, most of them, do not even know how to explain the reasons for their situation; they shrug their shoulders when asked and some, without knowing why, even smile. They are Mauritanian children and young people imprisoned, estranged from their families, and oblivious to the Convention on the Rights of the Child to which their country signed up just ten years ago.
Moving beyond the walls of these places of detention is no easy task. Even more so when, at first, questions are asked about children’s prisons. It is then that, annoyed by the very idea of juvenile prisons, the authorities do not hesitate to justify themselves by euphemistically calling them juvenile rehabilitation centers or juvenile preventive care centers.
And in this daily routine of shouting, beatings, and mistreatment, with a shortage of drinking water and a lack of minimum sanitary conditions, the children will experience a regressive change in their way of life, something that will later make them unable to adapt to the reality of freedom and which will lead, in many cases, to their re-entry into prison.
Biography
He specialises in advertising photography and image book publishing. His great love of travelling led him to make human interest reports for different NGOs such as Mundu Bat, Tierra de Hombres, Juan Bonal, which has taken him to countries such as India, Ecuador, Belize, Mexico, Vietnam, Romania, Mauritania, Morocco, Kenya, Mozambique, among others. These reports have been published in different national media such as El País, El Mundo, El Periódico de Cataluña, Diario de Navarra, Deia, Ediciones Júcar, GEO España, Viajar, Ronda Iberia, Editorial Santillana, Editorial El Viso, Ediciones Vicens Vives.
In 1998 and 2002 he was awarded the Luis Valtueña International Humanitarian Photography Prize and his photographs have been exhibited in cities such as Pamplona, Madrid, Zaragoza, Burgos, Valencia and Argentina. He was selected to participate in PhotoEspaña and the exhibition "Imágenes para la dignidad" gave him the opportunity to work with 38 international photographers, among them Sebastião Salgado.
He died on 27 May 2022, aged 67.
