Ronaldo Bolaños
Ronaldo Bolaños is a portrait and documentary photographer based in Dallas, Texas. Ronaldo has had his work featured in juried art exhibitions such as ART214 and Lucha Libre Art Exhibition at the Latino Cultural Center. He received first place in the 2024 Texas Intercollegiate Press Association Division I contest (Feature Photo and Photo Story) as well as named a winner for the 2023 Region 8 Mark of Excellence Awards for the Society of Professional Journalists. Ronaldo’s work finds ways to blend journalism and fine art as a way to express himself and the world around him. By focusing on this style of photography it allows him to truly see the world in his own way but also being true to the reality which is demanded in journalism.
Amor Eterno
Throughout my adolescence, family photo albums filled me with a great amount of emotions. Feelings that helped me understand the impact photography has on people. A vessel that allows people to revisit and showcase memories that spark a deep feeling that is beyond our realm of reality. As my family migrated to this country, photography became a way to continue to reconnect and served a way to document our new life in a foreign land. These photos helped showcase their family back home that life is still going even with such a drastic move. In these photos I saw humanity.
I want to continue to showcase my family’s growth within their surroundings and capture those quiet moments that we often take for granted. Time and time again, the immigrant experience gets misconstrued and I look to humanize a community that gets used as a political pawn, disregarding the actual lives behind them. Documenting my own family, I wish to share these reflective moments of everyday life as we navigate the work culture of the United States but still hold on to our Mexican family identities. By documenting my family in both in Mexico and Texas, I aim to illustrate how migration has made people adapt to their new environments while still finding ways to live freely in a country that often makes it difficult to do so.
As the environment and lives change around me, Amor Enterno is my eternal gratitude to the people and places that have shaped me. The work is to remember, to not let go of what is so easy to do. To stay true to ourselves and understand how we've changed since coming to this country.