Six plus six, twelve. One plus one, two.

Is it possible not to make personal a story like the one behind Twelve? Perhaps it is best to start this blog with a friendly warning to whom would read it, for constantly an intimate version would be found hence rather personal about this project. Some may know that we met in Cholula, Mexico; after looking for each other in different places and people. Juan, a traveler photographer, passionate to discover in the other the different facets and colors of the human race. A respectful man of nature-in its broadest sense- and a person committed to his passions. I, an intense humanist under constant construction (little poet, little philosopher, little artist and to some extent an environmentalist, apprentice of everything-teacher of nothing), cinema lover and an independent short films art director. The connection was almost immediate, the rest, we keep to building it.
Juan says that it's better to undertake a project which would help commit oneself to the development of a trip and that's how step by step the idea of “Twelve” began to be built. He wanted to travel around the world, i.e. leave Mexico through the Atlantic and back through the Pacific, thus going around the world. At the same time, some collective concern about the year 2012 begun to emerge. He began to research and with no much effort online information ranging from the more apocalyptic versions until the most unlikely ideas of enlightenment of the human race was founded. Finally, after searching for sources that would legitimize those versions he founded that all what the Mayans had made is a calendar which it´s 5125 years largest cycle ends in the year 2012, period. And that modern astronomers tell us that that year the planet, the sun and the centre of the galaxy will be on alignment, an event happening every 25 000 plus years.
All this led him to reflect upon our current situations and the heavy crisis in all sectors, the evident shortcomings of a system that is unsustainable and that ironically keeps further promoting a constant insatiable greed. Definitely we humans need to transcend our present condition, to shift our paradigm. Then the game with the number twelve came, which is itself an important character. The amount of countries, languages and years. The age of change and transition. The idea gradually began to settle down until it became what it is now: a documentary project with a portion filmed in digital format and the other, making a photomontage with still photography, which is Juan´s stronger side. Leaving twelve children of twelve different countries, say what they would have to say or what we would have to listen. And so he structured, calculated and began his project with six children, using as a first reference how accessible such or such country would be in economic and contacts terms. It started out with Kata from Hungary since there he knew Bea, one of his students in Denmark. Kristoffer from Denmark, the son of one of is best friends, Jan, was next. Then came Oumar from Senegal. Then recorded Sarah from Spain, followed by Farida a girl from Egypt where he was assisted by Maria, a German woman. And finally Mariano, an indigenous boy from Zinancantan, Chiapas, Mexico.
After trying some bureaucratic matters that were getting complicated to get into Russia, one of the countries where it was intended to pursue the project, he decided to return to Mexico to make therein those formalities and visit his family. So, thanks to my best friend we get know each other and then I start to become a part of: I marry him and the project as well, which I take half way through, where it was his and now beginning to be ours. So, on July 29, 2009, we traveled together from Mexico City