(Oviedo, 1983)
Born in Mieres, in 1983, a small mining town in Northern Spain, Naomi Soto soon started experimenting with the camera capturing her surroundings. By using the exuberant nature in Asturias as her model, she trained a serene gaze, the one of those who try to reach further than the evident and take their time until they find it.
In 2001 she moved to Madrid to study journalism at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, where she quickly realized that the still image would be her preferred means of expression. She combined her degree with a Professional Certificate in Photography, studies that would open for her, as press photographer, the doors of agencies like Europa Press or SevenPixNews.
Later on she moved to London, in 2009, where her approach to photography changed towards a documentary style that she would develop further during her MA course on Photojournalism and Documentary photography at the University of Westminster. Besides working as designer and picture editor at the arts publication Rooms Magazine, she materialised that shift into documentary photography in projects like Grow Heathrow, about a community of ecologists fighting the expansion of biggest London’s airport; Safe sex, where she give us a compelling insight into a sex worker’s daily life, or On the move, a piece on the squatters movement.
All those projects were previous to Black. Asturias: A future in ruins, a photo book which is now being exhibited in Spain where the photographer is currently based and working as a freelance.