VICTOR ARANGO
Chief Candela
What's that saying? Life's what you make it? My take on that: Life's how you curate it. Because life happens, and not all of it is ideal. That’s why I have chosen to live my life purposefully, to turn each normal day into an intensely curated day. And that way, day after day and somehow, I have curated a fascinating life.
I love what I do. I curate stories. Visual stories. One photo, one emotion at a time. And I am most passionate about the type of story-telling involving those critical moments in life, our rights-of-passage.
Although I cut my teeth in visual narratives as an Emmy Award-winning producer at Dateline NBC and honed my marketing skills as a strategic communications advisor to the top brass at the United Nations, I found my flow behind the lens. My training is evident in the photo-journalistic and documentary approach that you'll see in my work. For big events I like to compliment that style by partnering with other photographers whose style is different —some skew more to the fine arts, some more to the classical, some more stealth, some downright gritty. All of them are fun, nice, and all, like me, work their ass off. It’s our way of making sure that when you look at the final pictures you’ll feel like you didn’t miss anything that happened at your event.
By now, I have taken my photo and video lenses to more than 70 countries. The world I have seen is as humbling in its complexity as it is in its beauty and simplicity. Everywhere, always, I have connected and fallen in love, deeply, with people and their stories. Part of it is because I dive heart-first at life. It also helps that, as a polyglot, I can hitchhike, laugh and get in trouble in a bunch of languages.
So why do I curate visual legacies? Suffice it to say that it comes from being a multicultural specimen with an eclectic background to boot... think of me as your run-of-the-mill Colombian-born Jew raised in Iowa City who came of age in Manhattan, lived in 7 countries, and now resides in the Rockies. We all have a unique story and I see it as a privilege when I am entrusted with helping people curate theirs, one visual at a time.
