Juan Carlos Alom is, in many ways, emblematic of the generation that came of age artistically during the Special Period: nurtured by a collective spirit, searching for subject matter distinct from the politically determined work of the “epic” photographers, and constrained by the scarcity of photographic supplies. Out of necessity in the early 1990s, Alom worked with expired materials, leftover film bought from the cinema institute on the black market, and chemicals sourced from hospital x-ray labs. Substandard materials encouraged experimentation. Scratching his negatives and selectively developing his prints became part of his visual vocabulary, moving the content from journalistic documentation to something more expressive.

Juan Carlos Alom es un fotógrafo emblemático entre aquellos que alcanzaron la madurez artística durante el Período Especial. Animado por un espíritu de colectividad, se apartó del enfoque político de los fotógrafos “épicos”, mientras afrontaba escasez de recursos y materiales. En los 90s, esto lo condujo a trabajar con rollos caducados, recortes de película adquiridos en el mercado negro y químicos hospitalarios para rayos X. Esta precariedad incentivó la experimentación: rasgar negativos y revelar selectivamente se volvió parte de su vocabulario visual, transformando su trabajo de documentación periodística en algo mucho más expresivo.