Luis Carlos Ayala

Luis Carlos Ayala is a Colombian freelance photographer from Lebanon Tolima. That with 35 years

it has become the voice of life on the streets.

He arrived in Bogotá approximately 16 or 17 years ago, to continue his academic career, and although he is a well-prepared person academically, it is not something he likes to talk about, and in his own words. “I have studied several things, it is not something I like to talk about, I think my background academics, it's not something that should influence people's perception of me " (Ayala L. C, personal communication, 2021, 11 August).

Despite this, he has been experimenting with photography for 15 years and finds in it the need to tell and a way to communicate. "Photography is the outlet that I find to narrate many things about my experience, my being and what my life has been, being my great project"." (Ayala L. C, personal communication, 2021, 11 August).

But experiences have also emerged from these works that mark  people, and more so in the work of Luis who works with what I call  "the people of oblivion" who are those groups of people who have  been forgotten, estranged and marginalized by the society. Those  people who are like diaries with dates marked from the top of their  pages and each page a story to tell.

I asked Luis what the worst thing he had to live was, he replied that he has lived many experiences, but whoever knows him knows that what has marked him the most is undoubtedly the photograph of the embera girl in the third millennium and it is something that carries deep within him.

Ayala, L. C. (2020, 21 July). Today’s soup [Photography]. Intagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/CC7fEzVjULp

Luis's quest to tell the life “the people of oblivion” is so great that it has led him to stand out both nationally and internationally, in exhibitions and / or in articles in:

- Foreign policy

-Washington Post.

link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/06/02/colombias-mass-protests-indigenous-black-activists-find-echoes-colonial-history/

-Luxembourg.

Ayala, L. C. (2020, 22 February). Luxembourg exhibition [Collage photography]. https://www.instagram.com/p/CLqCfWsFnMz/

-Netherlands.

Luis is currently working on two projects about the sanber and the cauca.

you can also find some of his work with collective @delacallesomos, I will leave the social network in the contact section.

Finally I would like to give my personal opinion, Luis Carlos is an incredible photographer, I feel that he not only seeks to tell stories, I feel that he also wants to recognize them, and at the same time find himself, sometimes I hear the voice Luis  Through his stories on Instagram or I see his gaze through the photos and he feel  somewhat depressed person but not empty at all. I think he also seeks to express that with his work, he is a too empathetic and collaborative person. And  he inspires me, he makes me feel identified or generates certain emotions of compression. 

 I like that he continues to tell stories through his lens.

"People are like diaries, every day there is a story to be told"