Christian Rodriguez likes to immerse himself in projects, which have taken far from his native Uruguay, like the months he spent photographing circus workers in Vietnam. In many ways, his projects give him time to reflect on himself, his work and his life.

“When you live outside of your home country, you want to return to your roots,” he said. “Where are you from? Who are you? You want to build the story of your life.”

Those questions have informed “Teen Mom,” a series that looks at teenage pregnancy in Mexico, Brazil and Uruguay that recently was honored by Pictures of the Year Latin America. It is also Mr. Rodriguez’s most personal work to date.

“I am the son of a teenage mother,” he said. “It was a reality that I lived up close. That let me follow this subject in a different way.”

His images include scenes of girls in labor, contrasted with them holding their infant the next day. There are enraging — and heartbreaking — photos of Gloria, a girl from Oaxaca, Mexico, who, along with her two sisters, was raped by her father. Mr. Rodriguez also spent time in Brazil, showing mothers in their homes, where poverty prevents them from getting ahead.

“To me, this is a story that has been forgotten in Latin America,” he said. “It does not get the attention it deserves. And the statistics show that Latin America could soon lead the world in teenage pregnancies. This all demands attention.”

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Mr. Rodriguez, 34, had been living in Madrid for five years when he started delving into his past. His mother was 17 when she got pregnant during a summer romance. The father was also 17, although he left the scene once she told him she was expecting their child. When he was born, Mr. Rodriguez went to live with his grandparents, who raised him in Montevideo.

On a trip home to visit relatives a few years ago, he got his biological father’s name from his mother. He found him soon enough — living in Florianópolis, Brazil — on social media.

“Nobody can hide from Facebook,” Mr. Rodriguez said. “I wrote to him, taking off the pressure by saying I wanted nothing from him, just to find out my own story. I know he saw it within 10 minutes, but he took three days to reply.”

The two connected, at first via Skype and then in person. At their first meeting, in Brazil last October, the rush of emotions was too much for his father.

“When he saw me, the only thing he said was, ‘Forgive me, son,’ ” Mr. Rodriguez recalled. “And then he cried. He was affected by it.”

Abandonment was something he knew about from the work he had been doing on his “Teen Mom” project. At a Montevideo hospital where he photographed girls in labor, the majority of them showed up with their mothers, as the boyfriend had long left the scene. Mr. Rodriguez got access to the clinic after convincing doctors about his project and intentions. And the teenagers and their mothers, more often than not, consented to be photographed after learning Mr. Rodriguez’s personal connection to the theme.

“One thing that happens with teen moms is the smallest girls have no idea what they are going to confront,” he said. “At the moment of birth, they understand what is going to happen. For many of them it was traumatic and scary.”

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He returned the following day to do a portrait of mother and child.

“It was a calmer picture, he said. “Imagine, you spend six or seven hours with contractions, screaming and crying. The next day it’s the opposite. It was important to show them as mothers.”

But it is impossible to escape the fact that many of them are mere children, a point that his portraits of Brazilian girls at home underscore. He wanted to show them at home, in an impoverished place where some girls see pregnancy as a way to have something no one can take away. He would rather they have educational opportunities and programs that can offer a way out of the cycle.

“Too often, in favelas the adults just blame the girl, rather than help them,” he said.

His images from Oaxaca are unsettling, given the violence that befell Gloria, who was not even a teenager when her father raped her. While the father has been imprisoned, he is expected to be released in a few years. Mr. Rodriguez hopes he can collect enough donations to send Gloria to school. But the ultimate solution is larger than just one girl.

“All these things demand attention,” he said. “They demand programs on the part of the government. It cannot change from one year to the next. You have to strengthen everything.”

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