my story.

As a kid, I was timid, almost a hermit.  Operating in social environments was hard for me. But I was always watching, listening, and analyzing people and my surroundings. I was a chubby kid and bullied for it in school, which made life really hard.

I discovered Photoshop in art class, which was my first connection to art. I played around with it a lot, mostly for fun. Many years later, I had practiced it so much that I was the one showing my art teachers how to use it, and helping my classmates out. My teachers praised me and told me I had to work with design the future.

As a young adult my father was diagnosed with pancreas cancer. Unfortunately, he died very soon after he was diagnosed. A day I, of course, will never forget. The time after he died was a constant dull emptiness and a pain that never went away.

Time passed, and my mother met a new man, I was happy for her, she got her spirit back after dad passed away. Her new boyfriend was head of a big paper mill in the neighbor town and, he was an odd and funny looking man, but I did not want to judge the book by it's cover. Somewhere around the age of 21, I bought my first camera together with a wide-angle lens. I loved that lens, It's funny how that wide-angle style stuck with me and became integrated with my "photographic DNA". Life was good, my girlfriend decided to move to my place, and I was glad to be with her.

One day coming home from work, someone knocked at the door. Two men stood outside my apartment; they identified themselves as police officers. They asked me if they could come in. I said yes, and a thousand thoughts went through my head.

One of the policemen asked me to sit down. Suddenly it was as if I was in a vacuum. I didn't register much of his words, and I felt as someone ripped my soul apart as the words were coming out o the officer's mouth. He told me that my mother had was murderd. Her new boyfriend turned out to be evil; he had been lying about everything when confronted with his lies; he chooses to end my mother's life with an ax and knife.

Life became a black hole filled with pain and darkness. The time after my mother was murdered was unrealistic with trials, media, and disorder. On the outside, life moved forward, but on the inside, I was broken. It took me many years to get my life spark back. It was my girlfriend, my sister, the friends that I had and the photography that kept me alive.

Many years later, I decided to make a change, I wanted to do something about my life, so I decided to move to a new town. I wanted to work with photography, so I started my studio and dived into the commercial field, and I felt that my strength was slowly coming back.

 The business was hard in the beginning, but I fought my way up in a competitive world. I worked late nights and weekends to make life go around; on top of that, I became a father of two. There was to much pressure for me to handle, and I and fell right into a depression.

The depression was really hard on me because it took my ability to fight away from me, I had to start taking care of my soul. I came to the conclusion that I wanted to do something much more meaningful with my life, I wanted to work with art and to tell stories about the things I had experienced and seen.

Once I decided to do this, to work with art, it was like a revelation to that shy little kid who did not dare to speak. Art became my valve where I could convey the stories I wanted to, stories about society, people, how we treat each other, about technology and how it changes us, about staying strong in life when it throws pain, darkness, and malevolence at us.

My hope and dreams today is that my art will help other people feel the same strength that I feel today. I hope that it can encourage people to take steps that they haven't dared before, even if they are hard. I hope that the stories can make people think about their bad behaviors and do one of the hardest things there is in life, change and become a better human.