Omar Vega Photography

Photo essays featured in The Boston Globe

“Reckoning with my attraction to kitsch”

Ode to the best — and worst — of my summer holiday

Latest Work — Film

35mm & Medium Format

We live in an increasingly digital world, and I find no fault with that. My decision to return to analog is not to be contrarian. There was an intention that I felt was lacking in my artistic practice that led me to medium format film photography.

Portraits

Street

New York :: Atlanta :: Madrid :: Boston :: Barcelona :: Dublin :: Havana

Projects

Hyphen — The space between two worlds

I've spent my life balancing on the hyphen between Cuban and American, and finally decided it was time to explore my roots. And so it was that I found myself in 2016 traveling by car in Cuba. Along the way, I witnessed the daily lives of the people through dusty windows and heard stories from them wherever we stopped. I took it all in and searched for myself — my identity — in the faces and lives of strangers. It wasn't until years after the trip that I realized that I photographed the Cubans with a distance between us filled with my fears of not belonging, and my longing to belong. In the photos I made I saw their stories, and mine.

For more about this project, including the digital gallery and self-published books, click here.

The Shameless Portrait Project

Despite the negative connotations of the word shameless, I want to elevate it as a strength of character—and show that strength (power, defiance, joy, triumph) through the lens of the camera. It was in those shame-filled marginal spaces that we developed a sense of identity. However painful that might have been it was also affirming and transformational.

Project details here.

The Me of Universal Rhythms

Film photography, digital collage. Ongoing project.