Sahira Fontana and Géber García together form a perfectly synchronized work tandem. This versatile and complementary duo, with more than 15 years of professional experience, produces, photographs, and retouches images of high quality. Their clients are global and local brands, creative agencies, and marketing and communication teams, as well as luminaries in the editorial industry and in fashion, not to mention a long list of others.
Sahira is a graduate in advertising of the APEC University (Dominican Republic) and in 2006 earned a Master’s degree in commercial digital photography from the Efti School (Madrid). Géber studied laboratory chemistry at the University of Santiago de Compostela and also earned a Master’s degree in commercial digital photography from the Efti School in 2006.
The two have coincided in several aspects of their academic training, in their love for art, and now, in the coordination of the Photography major at the CHAVÓN School of Design. In fact, to the question as to why they accepted this new professional challenge, they answer in unison: “For the importance of the image!”
For them, photography is a tool that allows them to understand and appraise the world that surrounds them; in this sense they totally understand how young people perceive context and reality through it. That’s why, among the innumerable expectations they bring with them to the major they are leading—surrounded by an excellent team of teaching colleagues—is that “CHAVÓN can be a meeting point and setting for dialog about Dominican culture, where critical thought and the value of photography as an agent of change in our environment are promoted.”
As a couple, they plan to bring their best to their new management roles: Géber, technique and creativity, Sahira, research and production, thus strengthening their fortress built of two spirits, distinct but 100% complementary.
Among their ideals is to bring their synergy to CHAVÓN’s classrooms through the exploration and practice of the creative techniques inherent in photographic processes, always keeping an ear to the student’s voice, and promoting an intellectual search as students create their work.
To be sure, they offer a versatile view in this dynamic school, in the interest of openness and listening to the needs of the student body, which unfailingly results in improvements in the program by and for the group. Sahira y Géber consider the CHAVÓN family as “a large community that takes shape by building on its own viewpoint, with an interwoven and interdisciplinary vision that ensures contemporary artistic creation, practical techniques for professional tasks on our island, and recognition forged through the road traveled by its graduates.”
Given that they both followed these steps, the best advice they can give future CHAVÓN graduates is to be curious, thirst for knowledge, broaden their references, seek inspiration in their own context, and observe the world closest to themselves. They must also be open to creative collaborations, to building synergies, and to understanding that they can achieve fulfillment through empathy and widening their circles.
Speaking of circles, Sahira y Géber are clear that educating is an unceasing exercise in connection and renewal—a constant giving and receiving, in which they are already engaged and from which they will probably never be separated.
