FIREWORKS

In Ecuador, fireworks aren't background—they're ritual, celebration, the punctuation of every festival and saint's day. Growing up, I knew the sound before I saw the light: the whistle, the crack, the brief illumination that turns night into something else entirely.

When I returned with a camera, I wasn't searching for the spectacle of the burst, but for what happens in between—the smoke drifting through streetlight, the ember trails writing temporary calligraphy against darkness, the faces lit for just a moment before the black returns. Fireworks are the most ephemeral thing I've ever tried to photograph: light that exists for a fraction of a second, smoke that reshapes itself constantly, color that fades even as you see it.

This work brought me back to Ecuador not as a visitor, but as someone trying to understand the language of light in the place that shaped me. These images became my invitation to the Bienal de Cuenca in 2022—the first time an Ecuadorian photographer had been asked. But what matters to me is simpler: they're about home, impermanence, and the beauty that only exists because it doesn't last.