Eduardo Storch
A photographer interested in people
I was born in Montevideo 76 years ago. I am an OBGYN (obstetrician-gynaecologist), retired three and a half years ago. My last name means stork in German, so my profession was already conditioned in advance.
In 1973 I got married and travelled to Israel to do a stage at the Tel Hashomer Hospital. Before coming back I decided to do an internship at the Zahalon Hospital in Jaffo (currently it is a home for the elderly). During the two years that I lived in Israel, I began to be interested in photography, mainly focused on people. Walking through the Old City of Jerusalem and looking at people, of different cultures, races, religions, ethnicities, customs and clothing was like being in the belly button of the world.
I am interested in the richness of the human species, as Juan José Millas says in the book that he wrote in collaboration with Juan Luis Arsuaga The Life told by a Sapiens to a Neanderthal.
Over time I understood that what caught me was called “street photography”. About 10 years ago, some friends invited me to participate in a photography course and since then I took part in courses and workshops, but it was after retiring that I dedicated myself more intensively. I would even say that I am “possessed” by photography!
Over time I have abandoned the telephoto lenses because I prefer to get closer to the people with whom I often have pleasant conversations and many even ask me to send them the photographs.
Jorge Luis Borges said that in dreams we are “protagonists, spectators and scenery at the same time”, and in my opinion, the same happens with photography.
On April 11, at 7 p.m., the Inauguration of the exhibition “Photographic Meditation of Diversity in Uruguay” at “che.co. fee.” There will be some of the street portraits taken in recent years, of young, smiling and empathic people looking directly to his camera.
My interest in trying to improve the ability to get as close as possible to people, has lately led me to experiment with some close up street portraits. Attached are some of the ones I did at the last pride parade in Montevideo
“All the fears, the fear, my fears”
When we look at a photograph, we see objects, landscapes, or people, but we also see the photographer's gaze, and at the same time, we see himself, and his sensitivity.
How to photograph fear, how to represent that primary emotion in images, and how to express our own fear? In these photographs I have wanted to express the fear of disability, dependency, loss of abilities and the loneliness that this entails. Also the pain that death generates, the oblivion that accompanies it, and that constitutes a second death.
But fundamentally, I wanted to express that the worst fear is the one that we imagine, and as an old Japanese proverb says, “fear is as deep as the mind allows it.”
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