I am interested in reality. I am not interested in perfection, but in the little details that make someone's personality. My way of choosing subjects is more casual than it seems. I am twenty-one years old. I started taking portraits when I was fourteen. Initially, I was just photographing my friends – we would take pictures for fun. I wanted to have a document with which I could remember them. This is how I learned to look at people – to look for the details which made them unique. When I started photographing strangers, I was essentially recreating the same type of experience. Because I’m young, I am able to approach people my own age in a very direct way – my models are never intimidated by my camera. They get to the studio and I bet they think: “Oh, this child is going to take my picture? It will be easy then!” And I love that! We listen to some music and start playing around. The majority of the girls I photograph are between sixteen to twenty years old. Most of them have little modeling experience, which in the end is helpful to my aims as a photographer. Most of the time, they will arrive to the studio in some jeans and trainers and I think they look good as they are. Why would I make them wear some crazy high heels and tons of make-up, if that's not them nor is it me? I think the girls feel relaxed knowing that they are being photographed by someone like them – this is why the photos are effortless.

Mainly that they appear in fashion magazines and the models wear clothes with credits. The fashion is actually just an excuse, what I really enjoy is portraying people, if they have to be wearing branded clothes, well, that's fine with me!

Fashion is a form of communication. If I play a roll in all this I think it is to deliver the message: “Let me be a child, let me wear my trainers, don't cover my face with make-up, let things be as they are!”

I do not consider myself a fashion photographer, no. I do not want to shoot fashion exclusively. Fashion has a very strong voice in a portrait. It can be very descriptive. Fashion speaks about people’s choices – it tells us how someone wants to be seen. I consider myself an observer of this process of identity. I love looking at people, and I do this through the camera. My images are in fashion magazines and in fashion campaigns, but they are also in galleries and art magazines. Does that make me an artist or a fashion photographer? I don’t think I can resolve this debate so, for the moment, I prefer to just call myself a photographer because the photograph is my main medium.

I am in my last year, studying photography at the University of Arts of London. I think I have notably developed my practice since I started going to college. But to be honest, it was not really because of the lectures. I learned more from my classmates, from the technicians, from spending day after day in the studio trying everything and looking at every single photography book at the library. I just keep trying, I can't stay still…!

My masters if I have the time, and I want to keep producing images with the same energy as I do now.

My main inspirations never come directly from fashion photography. I love to mess around with the genres. I am inspired by loud music, a good book, an intense conversation, wine in a gallery, and a movie in Prince Charles' cinema.

I am Andalusian. I was born in Seville, in the South Spain. I think it is a beautiful place to be born and to spend one’s childhood. The oranges, the sun, the jasmine flowers in the summer, the churches... I moved around a lot as a child though – my mother was unstoppable. I guess that made me even more independent. I learned to write letters to my old friends and remember the cities I once lived in. I learned to carry on with life knowing that no situation is permanent and that there are always new places to see and new people to meet. As a teenager I lived in Cadiz (even further South than Seville). I used to ride my bike to school every morning and see the seaside from the road. I could also see the sea from my classroom's window. That made me feel calm, I don't know why exactly. But Cadiz is surrounded by the sea, it feels far from everywhere and I also felt isolated. That was not a bad thing for me since I liked to spend the days in the library, or just in my room reading, writing or looking at the ceiling. It was a slow and calm city, there was not much to do and that gave me the opportunity to create a personal space, a parallel universe. It made me very creative. I dreamed as much as I wanted. But at some point I became too hungry for adventures. I knew I needed to live in a city where things happened. Two days after my last school exam, I packed my camera, my diaries and a few things and moved to London.