Jim: After you discovered your passion for photography were you instantly drawn to make images of people and the human condition and why do you believe it's the genre you've gravitated to?

Robert: Not instantly. I went down all the normal roads. I started out photographing my own interests which were really not so different than most males at my age. I started taking pictures at the beach... photographing sunsets and empty streets. I felt like I had a pretty big breakthrough when I was allowed to photograph my first naked girl, then soon after I also got into night photography... long exposures in cemeteries and what not. Some of these phases lasted longer than others, but pretty much from the start I was taking pictures of my Grandma and Grandpa who I lived with at the time. Looking back, they were the number one consistency in my life... not just as a subject but also as parental figures. I have always had a close and healthy relationship with my parents, but they went through trying times of their own and Grandma and Grandpa were always right there. So if I go back and connect the dots... I was led to care about the human condition in whatever way it is presented to me, through my love for them.

 Street photography is often a stage where people are unaware that they are actors playing their own comedies or drama. The real world becomes a choreography for stories or allegories, subject to different interpretations.

Moments in Between is a collection of vivid portrayals of people and places I took around the world, in which ordinary everyday life reveals compelling scenes.

This testimony reflects some fragments of the US-Mexico international border, one of the borders with the greatest flow of people and goods in the world. The photographs were taken in July 2008, in Tijuana, Baja California Norte, and May 2010, in Nogales, Sonora. It alludes to the border wall as an emblem of intolerance and xenophobia symbol boundaries, speaking through an apparent absence of those who, from the south, in Mexico, crossing borders in search of a different life, but also those -in the north, in the EU-that close doors and criminalize those who are different.

My intention in this series of photographs is to explore the gender dynamics and sexuality of my subjects. I am also trying to capture how these dynamics are transformed into “appearances” which my subjects feel they must uphold. They are preserved as they are passed down from one generation to the next. "You have to look good.” “You have to be a man.” “You have to look young if you are old, and old if you are young.” These social pressures are a focus in many people's daily lives. For most people maintaining and upholding an “image” has become an obsession. This obsession extends not only to appearance, but also to the gender roles one is imprinted with at a very young age. Throughout their life, the majority of people are trapped in the confines of these roles. It confines us all.