Carlos Barrera grew up in the 90's in San Salvador, the most populated city in El Salvador, Central America. He studied communications sciences in El Salvador. In his photographs he makes stories about his surroundings. His work is based on the reality of hundreds of Central Americans: violence, culture, politics and society. He has been doing professional photography for seven years, three of them in the advertising area and the last four he has dedicated himself to photojournalism and documentary photography. He graduated from the documentary photography seminar at the VII Academy, educational extension of the VII Photo Agency and participated in the portfolio review of The New York Times and the City University of New York, he was also part of the students selected for the Eddie Adams Workshop 2023 in New York. In 2020 he won 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. His work has been published in media such as El País, New York Magazine, Vice, Internazionale.it and El Faro.