Chicago Magazine Photographer: Cover photoshoot for Positively Aware

Chicago magazine photographer cover photoshoot

On a snowy winter day, we crammed 18 people into a Chicago barbershop built for a dozen, so we could shoot the foldout magazine cover of Positively Aware’s annual HIV Drug Guide. It is always a challenge when you have to work with 13 subjects and have them all engaged, while maintaining the identity of the space and leaving room for the magazine logo, text, and the fold.

Obama’s Farewell Brings an End to an Era

U.S. President Barack Obama acknowledges the crowd as he arrives to deliver his farewell address in Chicago, Illinois, U.S., January 10, 2017. REUTERS/John Gress

After I moved to Chicago in 2003, I started covering a “skinny kid with a funny name.” Now he really wasn’t a kid at that time, but I was a mere 26 years old. I have seen the image in my mirror change and I have seen the man who became our President change as well with each image.

Last night was a fitting and emotional end to a chapter of my life which I will never forget.

Positively Aware Magazine photoshoot in Chicago: Latinos and HIV issue

Chicago magazine photographer portrait of Gilberto Soberanis

Positively Aware magazine and Art director Rick Guasco asked me to create a series of portraits for their September+October 2016 issue focusing on Latinos with HIV. Rick’s instinct was to photograph our subjects in front of Colorful murals in Chicago’s Pilsen Neighborhood. So after an hour or so of online research, we headed out to the neighborhood to see if what we found in cyberspace would work as backgrounds for our real people.