Today we’d like to introduce you to Fernando Matamoros.
Fernando, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I just remember always loving art in any type form. Which is music, photography or even painting, I always studied music or look at books from famous photographers, I just never knew how big of an impact a picture can have. When I graduated from high school, I went to California State University of Los Angeles for two years but I felt so lost and nothing came naturally to me but picking up my camera and heading out to the streets. So I decided to drop out of college and start shooting full time. Over time I end up finding myself starting to creative direct, find my love for clothing and grow as an artist.
Has it been a smooth road?
To me, if you’re an artist there no such thing as a smooth road, we all have our own demons to face but that’s what makes us great. There has definitely been a fair amount of struggles that I had to endure. Which is my family not believing in I can actually make a living off this, or facing periods where I wasn’t getting any clients so I was really broke. Also, I grew up in South Central LA an area where there no resources to support artist like myself but I would rather struggle than doing something that’s not making me happy.
In this day and age being an artist is tough, we always to tend to compare ourselves to other people who are doing “better” or have a bigger following. And most of us are scared to share our work since we’re afraid of people not appreciating it or your work not following the latest trends.
But thank God I have friends that support me and we keep each other in our lane to focus on the right things.
We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
I mainly shoot portraits and events now, beforehand I was shooting street photography. But I’ve done various jobs for Columbia Records, A$AP Ferg, Under Armour, and Adidas. I love working with people because there have been instances where a client may have been discouraged and the images I presented to them made them feel confident, also if we work as a team anything is possible!
Is our city a good place to do what you do?
I would say yes and no, in the area I grew up there no type of resources for us to grow or help us as artist. We have to find it and that would be difficult since most of us didn’t grow up with money. I feel like the city has to find a way to provide these resources in order to help these kids stay out of trouble and make them believe anything is possible.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: instgram.com/[email protected]
- Twitter: twitter.com/fernando_822
Image Credit:
My personal picture shot by my good friend @aim.os
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