Ciao!

I was born in 1981 in the province of Buenos Aires. Cruz isn't my last name; it's my middle name, and I prefer Juan Cruz over just Juan.
I’ve lived in the capital city of Buenos Aires since I was 22. My professional career has been entirely in the tech services sector, moving from Small-scale local businesses to multinational corporations.

I’ve been around photography since I was very young. My earliest memory is from around age 11, when I was allowed to use an SLR camera for the first time, though it wasn't until many years later that my interest in photography truly returned.

In 2008, I started photographing the city, focusing on its architecture. In 2018, I moved on to candid street portraits, using a 50mm or 90mm lens to isolate subjects from their surroundings. Over time, I lost the fear of getting close to people and swapped telephoto lenses for 28mm and 35mm focal lengths to immerse myself in the scene. This technical transition has allowed me to open up the frame, integrate the complexity of the environment, and work with a deeper depth of field—essential foundations of classic street photography.

In recent years, I was a member of the "Street and Candid" collective until its closure in 2025. It was a place where I learned exponentially about the fundamentals and key figures of classic street photography—principles that I try to apply today.

My current pursuit aligns with Joel Meyerowitz’s concept of the image: capturing the "tough":

"Tough" meant it was an uncompromising image, something that came from your gut, out of instinct, raw, of the moment, something that couldn't be described in any other way. So it was TOUGH. Tough to like, tough to see, tough to make, tough to understand. The tougher they were the more beautiful they became. It was our language.
— Joel Meyerowitz, Bystander, 1994



Juan Cruz