Nando Esteva
The Photography Angel
A child inhabits the body of Nando Esteva (Palma, 1979) – a child still present as he takes a photograph. Whispering to him that daddy watches over him from heaven: “I have a guardian angel: my father Rafael”, he repeats to himself over and over again. In 2024 Nando won a prize at the New York Photography Awards with the series of images created by artificial intelligence that illustrates this report. “If AI is just the beginning, what will come after?”, he wonders.
text Angie Ramón
photography Nando Esteva
Photography came to Nando’s life when he was just 16 years old, after meeting a prestigious photographer called Steve Rose. In that first step towards the unknown, he spent a summer in Hawaii with Rose, learning the trade. But what he actually learned was how to take out the rubbish and not touch cameras until several years later. “My life is full of very harsh memories and anecdotes. But I have learned from all of them. Steve, who was my boss – the only boss I have ever had – humiliated me in public, didn’t give me a proper employment contract and paid me very poorly. But I am grateful for that experience, because it made me stronger”.
During one of his trips around the world with Rose, Nando received the news that his father Rafael was suffering from cancer and was about to undergo life-and-death surgery. He dropped everything and returned to Mallorca to be at his side. “I stayed with my father and lost my job”, he recalls. After the operation, which gave his father a life expectancy of another ten years, Nando started out from scratch again.
He decided to quit photography forever. “It was a very stark contrast: I went from travelling all over the world with a great photographer for six years to being unemployed with a thousand Euros in the bank”. He thought about working as a graphic designer, but was rejected. He also considered training as a typist. Until one day, in Barcelona, he walked past a second-hand camera shop. And at that moment it became clear to him that his life was photography.
And Nando was Nando once more
“I somehow lost my childhood, my first girlfriends, my first friends. I travelled around the world and experienced the hardest, most humiliating side of luxury. [...]
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