{"id":203531,"date":"2025-09-05T23:34:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T23:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/203531\/"},"modified":"2025-09-05T23:34:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T23:34:09","slug":"taking-pictures-is-the-best-and-only-way-for-him-to-express-himself-san-diego-union-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/203531\/","title":{"rendered":"Taking pictures is the best, and only, way for him to express himself \u2013 San Diego Union-Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a young college student, Manuel Ceniceros<\/a> focused his studies on physics, math, and engineering. That is, until he saw a documentary about photography.<\/p>\n

\u201cI basically said, \u2018OK, I want to do that,\u2019 so I went out and bought myself a camera, a Pentax MX \u2026 and I started taking pictures,\u201d he says. After one of his cousins asked him to take pictures at a martial arts tournament at Southwestern College, Ceniceros\u2019 photos were published and he was paid for his work. \u201cImmediately, I\u2019m like, \u2018OK, now how do I become a photojournalist?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

He changed his major to journalism with a photo emphasis as a student at San Diego State University and started shooting for The Daily Aztec student newspaper.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt that same time, I started working for the Associated Press, just covering anything that they wanted me to in the county. Then, I got an offer to work for the Chula Vista Star-News, so I just jumped at that and started working for them,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was a fun job and I learned a lot. I did everything from car accidents to the dog of the week. I loved it all.\u201d<\/p>\n

It led to a career working for local, national, and international news outlets and agencies, transitioning into fashion photography, and embarking on a career in graphic design and as a video editor and motion graphic artist before retiring and returning to his first creative love \u2014 photography.<\/p>\n

Today, Ceniceros, 66, lives in Chula Vista with his wife, Julia, and their daughter, Gabriella. He\u2019s one of the featured artist\u2019s in Homegrown ArtBeat (HART)<\/a> by the San Diego Art Directory, a celebration of San Diego\u2019s creative community from 5 to 7 p.m. Saturday at Union Hall Gallery. The program also features live art and music performances by Concetta Antico<\/a>, Edmund Cosico<\/a>, Joe Dreamz<\/a>, Scarlett Baily<\/a>, Art & Soul by Karen<\/a> Cadiero-Kaplan, the Cover Lover<\/a> band, and a street photography slideshow by Heart Collective<\/a>. Ceniceros, who\u2019ll share a new collection of photos of artists in their personal creative spaces, took some time to talk about how the camera and photography have given him a way to express himself, and how his autism diagnosis has helped him understand his creativity.<\/p>\n

Q:\u00a0<\/strong>What drew you to this art form?<\/p>\n

A:<\/strong> I can\u2019t hold a note to save my life. I have no rhythm. I can\u2019t draw. Photography is my only artistic outlet, to be honest with you. I can\u2019t do anything else. For whatever reason, the camera was just a great way for me to express myself. It was the only way for me to express myself. Once I picked up the camera, it felt completely natural to me. The camera just really became a part of me and everything just kind of falls in place when I have a camera in my hands.<\/p>\n

What I love about Chula Vista\u2026<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a very mellow neighborhood.\u00a0I love it because there\u2019s people walking their dogs, street vendors that come by every once in a while, selling tamales. In general, it\u2019s a very quiet, peaceful neighborhood.\u00a0I like the ocean breeze; I love that I\u2019m close to a lot of family.<\/p>\n

Q:\u00a0<\/strong>Can you talk a bit about your experience as a photojournalist? What kinds of stories did you capture?<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0<\/strong>The San Ysidro massacre<\/a> happened and I was one of the first people there (in 1984, a gunman entered a McDonald\u2019s restaurant and opened fire, shooting 40 people and killing 21). That was a really weird day, for a lot of reasons. It changed my life completely. I got a phone call from Gamma Liaison, which is a French photo agency, and I got a call from Bunte, which is a German magazine. So, I started working for them that day. For those few days, which I didn\u2019t sleep at all, I was working for my newspaper, The Star-News; I was working for the Associated Press; I was working for Gamma Liaison; I was working for Bunte. At one point, I had to drive to the airport and get all my film on the plane to go to New York, Paris, and then Germany. I continued working for everybody and then I got a call in 1985 from Bunte, asking me if I could get on a plane and head to Mexico because there was a huge earthquake in Mexico City. I hopped on a plane with my wife because she\u2019d grown up in Mexico and visited Mexico City a few times. There was a lot of destruction, a lot of death. It was really odd and just showed nature\u2019s power. We actually got caught in another earthquake while we were there that was almost as big as the first one. We were at the airport and I swear people were just yelling and screaming. I just grabbed my wife and we stood by a big pillar. Eventually, we got on a plane and landed in Los Angeles, met a courier, and the film went from Los Angeles to New York, New York to Paris, to Germany. I had a bunch of pictures published from the Mexico City earthquake and one of the ones that won an award was in a big plaza with a pile of rubble about two stories high. There\u2019s a little old man with a broom, just sweeping the plaza and it kind of looks like he swept up that whole two-story pile of rubble. For whatever reason, that really struck a chord with a lot of people.<\/p>\n

Q:\u00a0<\/strong>You\u2019re also neurodivergent? Are there ways that this has shaped your art, your point of view as a photographer?<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0<\/strong>Yeah, I\u2019m autistic. When I do something, I kind of go way too far into it. I hyper fixate on everything and have tunnel vision. I\u2019m very low on the spectrum, but I can see it and now that I know what it is, I can look back and say, \u2018Oh yeah, I\u2019ve been this way all my life.\u2019<\/p>\n

It\u2019s basically all of my photography and all of my vision. When I was in graphic design and motion arts, one of the things that people liked about me was that, when I started something, I finished it completely. I wouldn\u2019t get out of the chair until it was done, I would hyper fixate on getting it done. With photography, it just really helps me. I just see the picture, even though I\u2019m looking at the whole world. My eyes just kind of go, \u2018Boom, there\u2019s the picture,\u2019 and kind of just fixate on that. A lot of guys, they take a lot of pictures and they move around for angles a lot; I don\u2019t. I kind of just see it, and I may shoot two angles, and I\u2019m done. I like to say that my brain doesn\u2019t even get involved, that it\u2019s just my eyes and my heart. That\u2019s kind of the way it\u2019s always been. Even with my photojournalism, I was able to just home in on what the picture needed to be, or what the story was.<\/p>\n

Q:\u00a0<\/strong>You\u2019re displaying new work, titled \u201cCreative Space,\u201d at HART. Tell us about this new exhibition of your work.<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0<\/strong>I started doing street portraits, and San Diego\u2019s kind of a weird place for doing street portraits; it\u2019s not like New York or Chicago, where there\u2019s a whole lot of busy people running around. I drove downtown and it was kind of empty, just a lot of tourists. I really like to talk to people, and I really like meeting people, and that\u2019s one of the things that I think made me a good photojournalist, is that I really like interacting with people and getting to know them. So, at one point, my daughter said we should go down to Barrio Logan and I took my camera with me. We started walking around, and there\u2019s a lot of little art hub kind of places. There are retail spaces, but there\u2019s also studio spaces, so we walked into one and just started looking around. I started taking pictures of small business owners, initially. One of the first artists I took pictures of was Gerardo Meza<\/a>. He\u2019s just an amazing person and a fun guy, very outgoing. So, I took pictures of him in his studio, and I started meeting more people, more artists, in Barrio Logan and taking pictures of them in their studios. I thought I could expand this, and since I follow a lot of artists on Instagram, I asked if I could come to them and photograph them where they work. They were like, \u201cOh, I just work at home, in my living room\u201d or \u201cIt\u2019s just in my garage,\u201d but that was perfect. Some artists have big studios, like one lady I photographed who has a studio gallery in La Jolla. Most people are in their garage, or one person I photographed just cleared a spot on her living room floor, put the canvas up against the wall, and started painting. I mainly want to show that you can do art anywhere, that art doesn\u2019t have to necessarily have all this stuff to do it. Everybody creates in different spaces. I just wanted to show people that everybody works differently, their creativity comes out in different ways.<\/p>\n

Q:\u00a0<\/strong>What is the best advice you\u2019ve ever received?<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0<\/strong>That there\u2019s no secret to photography, it\u2019s just getting out and doing it. My brother told me that you can teach techniques, but you can\u2019t teach creativity. I think that\u2019s probably the best advice I\u2019ve ever received in my life.<\/p>\n

Q:\u00a0<\/strong>What is one thing people would be surprised to find out about you?<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0<\/strong>Maybe that one of the reasons I shoot in black and white is because I\u2019m colorblind. Color just doesn\u2019t interest me, I think it just distracts from stuff, photographically. Subtracting the color, I think, gets the image down to its essence.<\/p>\n

Q:<\/strong> Please describe your ideal San Diego weekend.<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0<\/strong>It kind of depends on what I\u2019m doing at the time. The two things that have always been a constant in my life are photography and fishing, so I kind of have two ideal weekends. One is just going out with my camera and seeing people, talking to them and getting to know their stories. The second one would be fishing. I grew up fishing and it\u2019s one of the things that I just love. I live, like, two minutes from J Street marina, so just fishing at the marina and walking around and meeting people.<\/p>\n

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