Carlos Barrera

Documentary Photographer

Biography 

Carlos Barrera is a documentary photographer and photojournalist from San Salvador, El Salvador, whose work focuses on political and social issues in Central America. 

Barrera studied communications and began his career in advertising before shifting to photography. He later completed the documentary photography seminar at the VII Academy, an educational extension of the VII Photo Agency, and participated in portfolio reviews at The New York Times and the City University of New York. In 2023, he was selected for the Eddie Adams Workshop in New York. His work has been published in New York Magazine, Bloomberg News, NPR, Vice, Internazionale.it, El Pais and El Faro.

In 2020, Barrera received an honorable mention from the Inter-American Press Association for his work The Old Measure of Pressure for the Maras. In 2023, his work on plastic pollution in El Salvador was selected among the top 50 best journalistic works in Latin America by the Gabriel García Márquez Foundation. 

Photos: Life and Death in a Country Without Constitutional Rights

In 2022, El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele and its legislative assembly passed a law declaring a “state of emergency” that limited the rights of El Salvadorans to freedom of assembly, privacy of communication, and due process under the law. This temporary measure, designed to curb gang violence responsible for El Savador’s high murder rate, has been renewed 35 times as of March 2025, turning El Salvador into a nation where mass incarceration is the norm. Prisons in El Salvador have become severely overcrowded and reports of inhumane treatment, poor medical care, violence, and murder are common. This project focuses on the stories of individuals and affected families to show the private struggles behind public policy.