Delmi Álvarez

Delmi Álvarez (born 1958) is a Galician photojournalist and independent filmmaker. Alvarez' interests include documentary of social affairs, migration, environment, human rights and visual ethnography & anthropology. He began his professional career in 1983 in the middle of social worker conflicts and documenting Vigo and Galicia. In 1990, he lived in La Habana till 1992, documenting the life of Cubans in the ''Periodo especial en tiempos de paz. Entrevista in Caborian. Entrevista cada día un fotógrafo.

Delmi Alvarez documented between 1990 and 1991 the life of the Cubans during Plan Especial en Periodo de Paz, in a project: Cuba, el ultimo bastion: la lucha de un pueblo. For this photo essay, he received the FOTOPRESS award in Barcelona.

In 1989, he began a long term project about Camino de Santiago involving 13 photographers. They created a documentary exploring the ancient pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela with an exhibition running from Copenhagen to Japan or São Paulo, sponsored by the Galician government.

He covered the conflict in Yugoslavia (1991–1993). He published a book on the fighting and aftermath (Reporteiro de guerra en Iugoslavia). Testigos de una guerra

He was a guest lecturer and speaker in universities and schools, discussing the importance of visual story telling, documentary photography and photojournalism.

He wrote several books and one long term project Galegos na Diáspora, 1989-2009 about Galicians who migrated around the world. He gave presentations at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, in 2009 and at the City University of New York (CUNY). Delmi organized and curated several projects of photography with international photographers and others in cooperation with Ian Berry and Richard Kalvar.

Entrevista en identidades y diásporas From 2003 to 2011 he moved to Latvia working as photojournalist and writer in newspaper Diena.

In 2012 his project Photo Youth started in Riga, Pskov, Vyborg and St. Petersburg for young people with special needs. The project got a grant from European Union to be developed between 2012 and 2013 with Russia and Latvia as partners participating more than 250 children with disabilities, blind, deaf, schools and teachers. In 2015, there are many children of PhotoYouth that follow photographing, and some of them are interested to become professionals. Delmi got inspiration to write this project when he began to visit and photographing a school for blind and impaired children in Jugla (Riga).

As a filmmaker Delmi produced four broadcast documentaries from an ethnographic and anthropological perspective stories of life of persons living in the Galician diaspora in Africa, Venezuela and Russia based in the book Galegos na Diáspora 1989-2009.

Two more documentary films projects, one about Himbas filmed in the north of Namibia, a country that he loves to travel and another about scientific galicians living in Stockholm, Paris, Koln and Alabama. This both documentaries stopped to filmed when the galician government changed in 2009.

He is based between Brussels, Latvia and Spain working as documentary and editorial photojournalist for news wire service. In 2013, Delmi began a long term documentary photographic project about gold mining in Europe called "In the name of Gold."

In 2014, he began a degree in Anthropology.

• O rei galego de África: A galician businessman living in Namibia. Broadcast and co-produced by TVG (Television de Galicia)
• Galegos en Rusia: The story of two galicians in the city of Krasnodar. Broadcast and co-produced by TVG (Television de Galicia)
• Os galegos da Guaiana: The stories of 4 galicians living in the jungle of Venezuela. Broadcast and co-produced by TVG (Television de Galicia)
• Fuga de Cerebros: The stories of four couples scientifics emigrated living in Stockholm, Alabama, París and Koln.
• Himbas, struggle to survive: Etnographic documentary about of Himba people from Namibia.
• Europa paradise of broken dreams: Documentary about the immigration to Europe filmed in Greece.