Logroño, (EFE).- The photojournalist Sofía Moro has assured this Thursday that photography has allowed her to get closer to the interior of the people she has had to portray and thus express each story.
Moro has received the Gold Insignia from the Association of Graphic Reporters of La Rioja (AiG), which was awarded to him by the mayor of Logroño, Pablo Hermoso de Mendoza, in an act in which the president of this entity, Fernando Díaz, and the photographer Marisa Flórez, who received this award in 2018.
The winner of this edition has assured that, for her, “portrait is journalism” and has indicated that, with her work, she does not intend “a photographic display”, but to tell the story of the person in front of her.
Díaz specified that this is the tenth Gold Badge awarded by the AiG, which this year celebrates its 30th anniversary since its foundation, during which it has had to overcome “complicated” moments and many “difficulties” that almost led the association to ” disappear”.
He has assured that this award has not been given “to just anyone”, because Moro is the “best person who does portraits in Spain, without a doubt”.
Hermoso de Mendoza has agreed that a portrait painter “must have the sensitivity to capture the human condition and its essence in a snapshot.”
Vocation with formation
For his part, Flórez has reviewed the biography of Moro (Madrid, 1966), whose grandfather was also a photographer and his mother worked as his assistant.
Sofía always had an interest in photography, but she promised her father that she would study a university degree, so, after completing Biological Sciences at the Autonomous University of Madrid, she enrolled in 1990 at the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Bárbara, California ( USA).
In 1992, when he finished his photography studies, he traveled to Guatemala to photograph a hospital project for an NGO and there he met the photographer José Manuel Navia, in a fundamental meeting in his professional career.
The following year he returned to Spain and began working, until the year 2000, for the Cover agency where he had the freedom to propose subjects, a stage in which he did a lot of photography for the press and magazines.
Since 2001, she has worked independently and is a regular contributor to El País Semanal and Vanity Fair and also works for other publications such as Vogue, Marie Claire or Harper’s Bazaar.
Among his works, Flórez has highlighted the series “They and us”, portraits of veterans from both sides of the Civil War; and a project on the death penalty in the world, which allowed him to portray ex-convicts on death row.
The rest of the AiG Gold Badges have been awarded to: Jesús Rocandio (2013), Raúl Cancio (2014), Manuel Barriopedro (2015), Joana Biarnés (2016), Agustí Carbonell (2017), Marisa Flórez (2018), César Lucas (2019), Chema Conesa (2021) and Enrique del Río (2022). EFE
