Flashback. 2007. I was working as an assistant camera and camera operator. I was tired, with no ideas. It was clear to me (as it has been since then) that I had a lot of conceptual and technique gaps. I felt this urgency to learn new things, to find my own voice: I wanted to leave Quito, go back to school and be away for a while.

The experience of studying Cinematography in USA has been one of the most rewarding times in my life. In many ways, it has become a direct influence on my current work. Looking back, I think that it has to do with the fact that it brought me back to still photography: I was always with my camera again, something I had left aside back home.

In my undergrad years, even in high school, my camera was always close. Taking pictures was my way of dealing with new experiences, new places, new faces, the daily surprises. Still photography was my chance to be alone.

So I took pictures, without further analysis, just pressing the shutter, looking for things that will impress me. As I returned to still photography, that first feeling of being impressed, became, once again, very important to me.When I think about the pictures in this book, I also think a lot about probability: the chain of events that had to occur for me to have a camera in those specific moments, in those places, among those people. I think about the road you must travel to arrive to certain images, to a certain instant you want to remember. I think about how we select and build our own memory.

The theory of probability states: two or more events will be dependent on each other, when the occurrence of either one will affect the occurrence of the other(s). It seems to me that every photograph in this book is connected with the previous ones, with what I was going through while taking them, and also with the ones that are yet to come.