In the heart of Costa Rica, we find Gloria Calderón Bejarano, a talented photojournalist who has dedicated her life to capturing the beauty and reality of her country through her lens. She has traveled a path full of learning and experiences that have shaped her.
From her childhood in Curridabat to her international recognition, Gloria has demonstrated an unwavering passion for telling stories through her lens.
“I’m from San José and all my life I’ve lived in Curridabat,” Gloria shares, recalling her happy childhood surrounded by her parents who, no matter how busy they were, were always present, her siblings and cousins, with whom she always played.
“There were nine of us in total and quite mischievous; my mom remembers that there wasn’t a week when one of us wasn’t sewn or broken… One memory I have very vivid is that at my grandmother’s house in Barrio La California (where Limoncello Restaurant is located today), there was a wooden staircase that had a huge curve. My brother Rafa, my sister Gaby, and I used to use the plastic tub in which my younger brother Marco was bathed to slide down the staircase. It was like a roller coaster and we almost killed ourselves more than once,” she said.
The teachings of his parents have been a fundamental pillar in his life. “From my parents, I have learned the value of work, loyalty, humility, and unconditional love in the family”.
For her, the most important lesson is that the king and the school janitor are treated equally, because everyone deserves the same respect and attention, and this is something she has instilled in her children.
Gloria defines herself as a cheerful, authentic, and kind person, a loving mother, and a complete, brave, and generous woman. “I care little about appearances and what impresses me the least in this world is money. I look more at the heart of each person,” she says.
Professionally, she considers herself to be very demanding with herself and -terribly perfectionist-. She notes that being a perfectionist is both a virtue and a defect. “My greatest virtue I think is the capacity for forgiveness. And the biggest flaw is that I’m too sensitive.”
On the professional and work front…
Her education at the College of Communication at Boston University in Massachusetts was crucial in her professional development. “I worked at the U’s student newspaper, the Daily Free Press, covering college and city news – it was very exciting to cover events with senators like Edward Kennedy and John Kerry!” she recalls.
The Daily Free Press had a circulation of about 20,000 daily, Monday through Friday. “With the paper, I discovered my passion for covering sporting events because we covered all the disciplines in which the U participated: soccer, soccer, ice hockey, basketball, lacrosse, track and field, you name it. When I returned to Costa Rica I joined the newspaper La Nación where I worked for several years. I left to start working on my first book and then I decided to work independently for the media and different companies”.
From the beginning, Gloria knew she wanted to study journalism because she was passionate about communication and storytelling.
However, her foray into photojournalism was almost fortuitous. One day, two girls who worked for the Daily Free Press came in and invited them to join the paper. They also said that if they had a camera, they could take pictures for the paper, and it sounded like a lot of fun to Gloria. “I didn’t know many people yet and I saw it as an opportunity to make friends who shared my passion for journalism. I arrived very humbly with the little camera my mother had given me and for two months they sent me to cover events and I couldn’t get anything published. My photos were useless, out of focus, or simply boring, until one day I took a beautiful photo at an event and I got the cover. From that point on, I knew I wanted to keep doing it forever.”
Since then, Gloria has reaped success and recognition, establishing herself as one of Costa Rica’s most outstanding photojournalists. Her work is a reflection of her passion, commitment, and love for her country.
She is passionate about portraits and sports, but what she enjoys most is the photo essay where she can develop a theme through photos and tell a story or expose an important topic.
The most notable changes she has noticed in the evolution of photography
In Gloria’s opinion, many say that photojournalism is aready dead and undoubtedly photojournalism has been facing great challenges to survive with the decline of print media, the reduction of editorial budgets, and the growth of social networks. But she believes it is still alive and will continue to exist because of that need for visual storytelling of events. “A high-impact photograph can tell a story better than a thousand words.”
She is also a writer…
She is the author of several books. The first one called “Costa Rica Pura Vida”, was published in 2001 with Villegas Editores of Colombia. It is a text with only images of Costa Rican people living their daily lives. Then, she elaborated with chef Oscar Castro in 2006, “Sazon Arte”, and a cookbook. She is the author of “La Negrita” when the 375th anniversary of the apparition of the Virgin of the Angels was commemorated; the book was published in 2010. She has participated in other texts that, of course, she shares with other authors such as “Costa Rica con Ojos de Mujer”, which came out in 2020 and which is a collection of images of Costa Rica, all by extraordinary Costa Rican women photographers.
She is still creating another book… she could not share many details, only that it is a book about his experiences in Costa Rica, to which she wants to dedicate all his energy and professionalism. “I already have some material ready, but I still have a lot of work to do and I still don’t have the means to finance the publication. But if everything goes well, it could be ready in about two years”.
A recognized work
Gloria Calderón has participated in several competitions in the United States, Spain, Mexico, Colombia, and others…
Through her admirable work, she has obtained several recognitions, among them: The mention of the Pío Víquez of Journalism in the year 2021 in the work Las Titas, about the care economy, which she did together with other Costa Rican photojournalists for Colectivo 506.
When she graduated from Boston University she received the Blue Chip Award as the best of my generation; she has received awards and mentions from the Mario Roa Photojournalism contest; she was Photographer of the Year of La Nación in 2000 and the book Pura Vida won several awards internationally, including the award for best cover of the prestigious Book Fair in Colombia.
The meaning of telling the story of Costa Rican life through photographs.
“Costa Rica being such a rich country and with such a joyful population, it becomes a wonderful adventure to be able to leave a visual legacy of its culture, its traditions, its natural beauty, and its people”. Gloria says that she has thousands of anecdotes of her work in photography, but one of the most beautiful things she has had the opportunity to do was to photograph Our Lady of the Angels, behind closed doors one night in the Basilica when she was making the book “La Negrita” with Father Glenn Gomez.
And She said: “I had never been so close to her and from the emotion my hair stood on end and my hands trembled. I am a great believer… She saved my life, so when I heard about the idea of doing this book of La Negrita, I sought out the representatives of the church and offered to do it at no cost. I had a very big debt to her because I had a very serious accident while I was studying in Boston in 1997. It was a crash, I broke the odontoid process, a small bone that joins the first cervical with the second cervical. I needed surgery with several titanium screws and a graft from my hip to rebuild my spine. When the doctors finished they told me that they really had no medical explanation as to why I was not only still alive, but why I could still walk. The injury I had was the same injury that took away all mobility from actor Christopher Reeve. There is no doubt in my mind that La Negrita held my head until they could hit me again”.
Inspiration through photography
For Gloria, photography, journalism, baking, and life itself: are always full of challenges and learning.
She believes that just because you did well yesterday doesn’t mean that tomorrow will be the same. In general, her motivation is to try to be much better tomorrow than she is today, and if that doesn’t happen because she made a mistake or because everything went wrong, she immediately decides to get up, shake it off, and try again. “For me, a failure is just another way to learn and I firmly believe that the road to success is paved with all those little failures that taught you that you had to try differently”.
She is a totally “Gluten Free” baker.
With joy, Gloria told us that when she was little, she would go to a friend’s house and her mom always had the most amazing cookies for them. “She was amazed once she had made our names with letter cookies” and so she set out to be the mom who made cookies when she had children, today it is a reality.
As it turns out, she made the cookies, cake, and a whole bunch of other goodies for all of her children’s birthdays. In the beginning, she said that not everything was very nice, “the cakes were all crooked, but I started to watch tutorials on the internet and little by little I improved, because you learn by messing up”. Sometime later, that is, 18 years ago I was diagnosed with celiac disease and then I had to start over and learn to work the recipes with gluten-free flours”.
Today she says that the diagnosis was a blessing because she was living sick and tired. She currently has her digital business Gloriously Gluten Free, which you can find on Instagram as (@gloglutenfree). She makes a little bit of everything: rolls, decorated cakes, cookies, cupcakes, macarons, and even marshmallows. She works on demand because she has to be more organized due to the incredible job of being a mom to her three children Gloria, Tomás, and Felipe.
What does She consider She has yet to do or achieve?
She wants to visit Australia, go on safari in Africa, and see the Northern Lights. In addition, I want to learn German, learn to sing, and learn to knit. She wants to write a series of fantastic stories for children and also finish publishing her new Costa Rican book. “I want to continue and give light to the podcast project I have with the Children’s Museum; I would love to take acting classes and go out in some play where I don’t have to dance because I have two left feet. Above all, I want to see my children grow and fly, and may God give me life so that one day I can have lots of grandchildren,” she added.
Beyond journalism, photography, and baking?
There is a woman who is undoubtedly multifaceted, who has been a reader by nature, she reads religiously every day even for a little while she loves the Harry Potter saga and fantasy, detective, and suspense books. She is very active, she has practiced several sports since she was a child, the main one has always been racquetball, a sport to which she returned competitively some time ago and last year she was the National Champion in her category winning four of the five National Tournaments. She also runs (although little and slowly) and now keeps playing a lot of paddle tennis. She is fascinated by music and theater, “and if we put them together in musical theater, even more. And finally, I love languages: I speak English, French, Italian and Portuguese, and well, Spanish”.
How are you? Without a doubt a great character…
In TCRN, we always tell our interviewee to express a message for you our dear readers, Gloria was no exception, and she wanted to share 4 messages that she always reminds her children:
1. Every person you meet in life is living a series of circumstances that you know nothing about. That is why you must always be kind, always supportive, always patient, and always respectful.
2. Each of those people you meet has something to teach you.
3. We should never tire of learning.
4. We should never tire of doing well.
It has been a pleasure to meet and talk with the renowned photojournalist, writer and now pastry chef, Gloria Calderon and of course, to be able to capture here her story full of pure essence of Costa Rica.
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