ABOUT

Fonografia Collective is a partnership between a journalist and a photographer, their colleagues and an audience. We are neither a media nonprofit nor a company, but we work together to advance our vision of what journalism and storytelling should be.

We are dedicated to bringing local and international stories about human rights and social issues to a wider audience. By combining traditional approaches with multimedia storytelling, Fonografia Collective focuses on how important global issues like development, economic trends, the environment, health care, immigration, or poverty affect people’s everyday lives. Since 2005, these stories have taken us to the U.S.-Mexico border, Panama, Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, Peru, Turkey, and Haiti.

Fonografia Collective wholeheartedly believes that empathetic, balanced, and compassionate journalism must inform audiences, shape public opinion, and influence the creation of progressive national and foreign policy. Now more than ever we – as journalists, photographers, and witnesses – must strive to foster cultural understanding and tolerance while shedding light on the most pressing issues of the day. Without such reporting, our awareness of issues like resource scarcity, forced migration, or human trafficking (among countless others) would be non-existent or biased, at best.

At a time when our media industry is reinventing itself and looking for new, more sustainable models, we feel that documentary-style, non-breaking news features about real people and real places must be part of this evolution. Fonografia Collective will continue to explore new ways of telling humanistic stories, as well as seek a more collaborative approach to journalism, one that can grow into a community of like-minded global storytellers.


BIOS

Ruxandra Guidi | Journalist & Producer

Ruxandra is a writer and producer with experience working in radio, print journalism, and multimedia. She has reported from the Caribbean, South and Central America, as well as the U.S.-Mexico border region.

In the Fall of 2009, she taught a college-level class in the Radio-Film-Television Department at the University of Texas, Austin, called “Creative Storytelling with Sound”.

She’s a recipient of Johns Hopkins University’s International Reporting Project (IRP) Fellowship, which took her to Haiti for a variety of stories in the Fall of 2008. Earlier that year, she and Bear Guerra worked on a series of reports for print, radio and television about the lives of coca farmers in Los Yungas, Bolivia, and about controversial drug policy under president Evo Morales. The reporting was made possible by a grant from the Washington-based Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Previously, she did reporting and production work for the BBC public radio news program, The World. Her stories focused on Latin American politics, human rights issues, rural communities, immigration, popular culture and music.

Ruxandra has a Master’s degree in journalism from U.C. Berkeley. A native of Caracas, Venezuela, she is now based in Oakland, California, with husband and collaborator, Bear Guerra.

 

Roberto (Bear) Guerra | Photographer

Bear Guerra is an independent photographer whose work focuses on humanitarian and social issues around the world.

He was awarded a Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting Grant (Bolivia, 2008), and his photo essay on the grass-roots opposition to La Parota Dam (Mexico, 2006)  was exhibited in the 2008 International World Exhibition in Zaragoza, Spain. Other recognitions have come from the Magenta Foundation (Flash Forward: Emerging Photographers 2007, honorable mention); The Santa Fe Center for Photography (2007), The Golden Light Awards (2006 & 2004); American Photography 21 (2006) & 24 (2009); Shots Magazine (Documentary Issue #92); and The Society of Publication Designers (2005).

His images, photo essays, and multimedia stories have been published widely by outlets including Orion Magazine, The Boston Globe Magazine, Texas Monthly, Virginia Quarterly Review, Seed Magazine, National Public Radio, BBC’s “The World”, Guernica Magazine, The Sun, and others. He has also worked closely with non-governmental organizations including Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the International Rescue Committee (IRC), and Equipo Argentino de Antropología Forense.

 

Luis Guerra | Sound Designer & Composer

Luis Guerra is a musician and producer whose work has taken him to Latin America, Europe, and throughout North America. He produces and composes music for mixed media from his Albuquerque, New Mexico-based Terremoto Studios.

He has worked in the Peruvian Amazon on a documentary and archival CD about the Shipibo’s practice of using songs for healing. Currently, Luis is the sound designer and composer on a documentary film about Native American youth in New Mexico and Arizona. In 2009, he became a lead instructor for the Empowerment Through Music program, which teaches music production to incarcerated youth in the Bernalillo County Juvenile Detention Center.

His music has been featured and reviewed on NPR’s “Latino USA,” The BBC’s “Global Hit,” and a New Mexico Public Radio series focusing on jazz musicians.