Behind the Lens, Hope

When Jonathan Lanza reached the Suma sector of Catia La Mar, in Venezuela, the scene stopped him in his tracks. Four-story buildings had collapsed onto one another like pieces in a Tetris game. Ambulances surrounded the area as people shouted and ran through clouds of dust.

“I had to pray right there,” Lanza recalls. “A tear came down. I told myself, ‘Jonathan, this is your job. This is what you came here to do. Focus. You can do this.’ I gave myself a couple of pats, took a breath, and started working.”

It was June 25, one day after an earthquake devastated La Guaira state. Lanza, a 36-year-old Adventist photographer from Caracas, had reached the coast along an old, abandoned road—the only route authorities were allowing motorists to use. He had no idea yet what he would encounter.

Behind the Camera

Lanza describes himself as two different people.

“I’ve always been very shy, very quiet,” he says. “The quieter I am, the less attention I draw. That’s who I am. But with photography equipment in my hands, the way I see the world changes.”

Born and raised in Caracas, Lanza grew up in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Today he serves as an elder and communication director at the San Martín Adventist Church and as youth ministries director for his district.

Volunteers and residents team up to search for survivors among collapsed buildings in San Bernardino, Caracas, Venezuela, on June 29. [Photo: Jonathan Lanza]

He studied graphic design but changed direction after buying his first camera and watching a documentary about a prominent war photographer.

“That documentary marked me,” he says. “I said, ‘This is what I want to do.’ ”

Weddings were never what drew him to photography. His interest was in the streets and documentary work.

“Telling a story is what comes naturally to me,” he says.

The Day Everything Shook

June 24 was a holiday. Lanza’s wife, Jessica, and their 6-year-old daughter had gone out earlier in the day, while he was celebrating a friend’s birthday.

On July 8, people work among the rubble of buildings destroyed by the June 24 earthquake in La Guaira, Venezuela. [Photo: Jonathan Lanza]

At 6:05 p.m., as the group sang “Happy Birthday” in an open parking area, the ground began to move.

“I was blessed because there was no roof over me,” he says.

His first instinct still surprises him.

“I haven’t even told my wife or daughter this. At first, I didn’t think about them,” he says. “I took out my phone and started taking pictures. I thought, If we felt it like this, the streets must be in chaos. I have to go get my camera.”

With phone service down, Lanza got on his motorcycle and spent more than an hour searching for Jessica and their daughter. Eventually he found them at home, safe.

After an embrace and reassurance that they were all right, Lanza headed back out with his camera.

“You can see the fear I was feeling in my photos from that first day,” he says.

At Ground Zero

Before dawn Lanza received a call from an international news agency asking him to document the disaster—an opportunity he had pursued for years, but one that suddenly carried enormous weight.

On July 27, Alexander Chirinos holds his pet rabbit beside the remains of his earthquake-damaged apartment in Brisas de Maiquetía, Catia La Mar, La Guaira, Venezuela. [Photo: Jonathan Lanza]

“I couldn’t show up with just any picture,” he says. “If I wasted the opportunity, there were 20 or 30 others behind me who wanted it.”

In La Guaira he encountered scenes unlike anything he had photographed before.

There were bodies. He heard people calling for help from beneath the rubble. At one site a trapped woman’s arm remained visible, moving in response as rescuers called out to her.

“There were so many stories that sometimes you couldn’t stay with just one,” he says.

Some of those moments still weigh on him.

As he worked, Lanza followed a principle he had learned from other photographers: document the moment without intruding on it.

“When you arrive at a scene, you’re the elephant in the room,” he says. “Everyone sees you coming with the camera. Your job is to become the mosquito, so people don’t feel intimidated or uncomfortable.”

For him, that begins with respect.

“There are people who just need to be heard, and my job is to find that person in the middle of their pain,” he says.

Albert Herrera, 20, sits beside the bodies of family members on July 1, after pulling them from the rubble of their apartment in a residential complex in Los Cocos. Lanza sat with Herrera and shared a meal with him. [Photo: Jonathan Lanza]

Respect also meant knowing when not to take a photograph.

“Many times I chose not to photograph the bodies of children,” Lanza says. “I know those are the photographs that sell the most, but that wasn’t what I wanted.”

Sharing Bread Beside the Bodies

One encounter remains especially vivid for Lanza, and became a photograph in a way he never expected.

Five days after the earthquake, near a collapsed residential complex in Caraballeda, he noticed 20-year-old Albert Herrera sitting on the ground beside two bodies.

“I asked him, ‘Are they your family?’ ” Lanza recalls. “He said yes. They were his mother and his sister.”

Herrera had survived because he had not been home when the earthquake struck. His father, mother, and sister had not survived.

Lanza sat down beside him. For a while he said nothing.

A woman grieves in La Guaira, Venezuela, on June 28, days after powerful earthquakes devastated communities across the region. [Photo: Jonathan Lanza]

When volunteers began distributing sandwiches, Herrera offered his to Lanza.

“He told me, ‘Come, eat with me,’ ” Lanza recalls. “I didn’t want to eat that bread, but I understood that it was his way of having someone there with him.”

The two ate together as they waited for the bodies to be taken away.

“I could have taken that photograph from far away with a telephoto lens, and he never would have known,” Lanza says. “But sharing that moment with him, that is what stayed with me.”

When the Lens Becomes Service

As the days passed, Lanza says his daughter helped keep him grounded. So did a conviction that grew stronger with every photograph he made.

“Every time I took a picture, I connected with someone who had lost everything, and I felt it as if it were mine,” he says. “I felt as though the people who were dying were my brothers and sisters.”

As he documented the devastation, Lanza began to see his camera not only as a professional tool but as his way of serving.

When the Inter-American Division and the General Conference published photographs documenting the disaster, many were his. Lanza also made his images available to the local church organization to support efforts to raise assistance for affected communities.

A woman holding her dog stands before the rubble of collapsed buildings in La Guaira, Venezuela, on June 28, following the earthquakes that struck the region. [Photo: Jonathan Lanza]

“I may not have the means to buy a truckload of water, which is so desperately needed in La Guaira,” he said. “But through a photograph that makes the front page, someone outside sees it and helps. Maybe I’m not the one who is going to preach, but this is my way of helping.”

For Lanza, that service is also an expression of faith, one he prefers to demonstrate rather than announce.

“Your actions have to speak louder than your words,” he says. “Through my work I want people to see that I’m Adventist without my having to say it.”

What the Earthquake Left Behind

Weeks later Lanza is still processing what he witnessed.

There were days he chose not to return to La Guaira. There were days he cried.

The experience has taught him to pay attention to his mental well-being and to protect his young daughter from the most disturbing images he has documented.

Still, he believes something meaningful can emerge from the devastation.

“Maybe we are suffering now, but years from now we may be able to give thanks because, through this earthquake, many people found salvation and drew closer to God,” he says.

The disaster also shook his own spiritual life.

Jonathan Lanza reflects on the sense of responsibility he feels behind the lens. “Without the camera, I wouldn’t have dared,” he says. “But with photography equipment in my hands, I feel a responsibility to document this story.” [Photo: Elisamuel Devis]

“Ever since we were children we’ve heard that Christ is coming, and you get used to hearing it,” Lanza says. “But when something like this happens to you, you say, ‘It’s true.’ ”

During a reflection at church, members were asked whether, had they died in the earthquake, they were certain of their salvation.

“That makes you reflect,” he says. “We really don’t know what will happen tomorrow, and we truly need to walk hand in hand with God.”

After photographing collapsed buildings, grieving families, rescue efforts, and lives interrupted in a matter of seconds, Lanza knows what he hopes people will see when they look at his images.

“That not everything is lost,” he says. “When the night is at its darkest, dawn is already on its way.”

The original version of this commentary was posted on the Inter-American Division news site.