[Time of writing: 12:45 a.m. in SD, Venezuela]
Have you ever wondered what your city truly looks like as it moves through an ordinary day? I mean the rhythm it follows, the pulse it carries without announcing itself. Something close to being omnipresent, able to gather fragments of different corners of an urban landscape and capture them exactly as they are. No poses, no special lighting, no editing tricks. Just you, the subject in front of you, and a story built from absolute normality. I know it may sound as if I am inventing meaning after the fact, but I am not. When I took these photographs, my only intention was to preserve one more day in my San Diego, my city.
Every day I walk past places that are visually compelling and somehow I forget them. I postpone them. I tell myself that one of these days I will come back and photograph them, and it simply never happens. Then, almost like an epiphany, sudden but deliberate, I began collecting small fragments of micro narratives in the form of images from my small city. Nothing spectacular, nothing staged. Just corners, textures, and quiet scenes that had always been there, waiting for someone to actually see them instead of rushing by.
Empty cars abandoned for decades still resisting weather and time, strangely beautiful against the contrast of the streets and their surroundings. The only airplane that crossed the daytime sky above my head in more than a year, and one I was finally able to capture. Streets, sunrises, and buildings that carry stories from the past and others that remain untold in an uncertain present. Each frame felt less like documentation and more like quiet evidence that even the most ordinary spaces are layered with memory.
There is nostalgia, yes, but also a small tribute to the concrete and asphalt that have shaped my life. These are the streets, avenues, parks, and sidewalks I have walked from childhood into adulthood. An evolution I keep carefully stored in my mind and, in part, in these unpretentious photographs taken by a woman with an honest weakness for capturing moments. The past is the permanent subject of true photography. From a simple selfie to a Pulitzer Prize winning image, everything ultimately describes the same thing, a vision of what has already happened.
San Diego, my home, my urban landscape, my small city. A piece of me is reflected here as well, in these photographs and in the singular perspective every person brings when choosing to press the shutter. The normality, the rhythm, the way a city breathes and lives its daily routine are the true purpose of this post and this set of images. It is also, I admit, a quiet declaration of admiration and love for my own city. I explore its streets and somehow end up describing parts of myself I did not even realize were there, all because I decided to simply photograph.
All photographs and content used in this post are my own. Therefore, they have been used under my permission and are my property.
