We had the good fortune of connecting with Jorge Grau and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jorge, what do you attribute your success to?
The honesty of the curiosity. Being in constant research. Even when I don’t have a camera with me, my mind is all the time looking at the light reflections or the colors. The people that is close to me know this well.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I grew up in a traditional Catholic environment which was modern in some ways, but not enough for me to drop out of college and work as a fashion photographer. So, the moment I knew I wanted to be a photographer it was literally the middle of my advertisement and publicity studies in college. It was a very hard decision to tell my parents. It has always been important to me for them to feel proud of their son. At the same time, I had this clear idea of being a photographer and I needed to pursue it. So, I needed to demonstrate that I really wanted to do photography as a job. From then on, I started working a lot, sometimes day and night for not much money. However, at the end of every month, I was making a good living. That’s the moment I dropped out of college and opened my first studio. Grau & Quiles.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I would take them mainly to three different environments that we have around LA. First the beach: Malibu, maybe with lunch at Neptune’s Net. Second, Angels National forest with a stop on the road at Newcomb’s Ranch. And of course Joshua Tree, the desert, and Pioneertown. In Los Angeles I would take them to the Hollywood Hills and Griffith Park. Have a coffee in the morning at Spoke Bicycle Cafe. Have a drink or two at Zebulon or Good Times at Davey Wayne’s.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
There are a lot of people that I would love to mention here. If I need to synthesize it into two it would be my father, for always giving me the winds to fly and teach me how to have my own criteria, and my friend and best photo assistant Yago Cobas, and all the countless conversations we had about photography, art, and life.

Website: www.jorgegrau.com

Instagram: @jorgegraudecorral

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