ABOUT
Fonografia Collective is a collaboration between a journalist, a photographer, and other media artists working to tell under-reported local and international stories about human rights, the environment, and social issues.
Utilizing radio, still photography, the written word, multimedia storytelling, and public installation, Fonografia Collective focuses on how important global issues like development, economic trends, climate change, health care, immigration, or poverty affect underrepresented communities and ordinary people’s lives. Since 2005, these stories have taken us to the U.S.-Mexico border, Panama, Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, Peru, Turkey, and Haiti.
We are driven by telling human stories, and believe that empathetic, balanced, and compassionate journalism and storytelling must inform audiences, and help shape public opinion. We feel that documentary-style, non-breaking features and artistic projects about real people and real places must be part of this evolution. Fonografia Collective will continue to explore new ways of telling human stories, as well as seek a more collaborative approach to media, one that can grow into a community of like-minded global storytellers.
BIOS
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. Currently, she’s a reporter with Southern California Public Radio in Los Angeles, focusing on immigration and emerging communities for both local and national audiences.
Most recently, she collaborated with Bear Guerra on a year-long investigative piece about carbon markets and forests in Panama with the help of a grant from the Christensen Fund. 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, with funding from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Previously, she did reporting and production work for the BBC public radio news program, The World. Her stories generally focus on human rights issues, the environment, Latin American politics, rural communities, immigration, and popular culture.
Ruxandra has a Master’s degree in journalism from U.C. Berkeley. A native of Caracas, Venezuela, she is now based in Los Angeles, California, with husband and collaborator Bear Guerra.
Roberto (Bear) Guerra | Photographer
Bear Guerra is a photographer whose work focuses on humanitarian, environmental, and social issues around the world.
In recent years, he has received funding from the Society for Environmental Journalists (2011), The Christensen Fund/Project Word (2010), and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting (2008). In 2010 Bear was a finalist for a prestigious National Magazine Award in Photojournalism for his photos accompanying Ruxandra Guidi’s story, The Young Mothers of Port-au-Prince (Virginia Quarterly Review, Summer 2009). His work on the grassroots opposition to La Parota Dam (Mexico, 2006) was exhibited in the 2008 International World Exhibition in Zaragoza, Spain and in an on-going traveling international exhibition, and were published in the book Agua, Rios, y Pueblos (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 The Atlantic Magazine, Orion Magazine, National Geographic NewsWatch, The Boston Globe Magazine, Virginia Quarterly Review, Texas Monthly, Seed Magazine, National Public Radio, BBC’s “The World”, and many others. He has also worked closely with non-governmental organizations including Médecins Sans Frontières, the International Rescue Committee, and the Children’s Environmental Health Institute.
Originally from San Antonio, TX, Bear graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a degree in Anthropology, and is currently based in Southern California.
Luis Guerra | Sound Designer & Composer
Luis Guerra is a musician and producer who has worked throughout Latin America, Europe, and 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.