Juan Orrantia

(b. bogota, Colombia)

Working in the documentary arts,  Orrantia’s practice is based on the evocative possibilities of photography as a critical form of documentary. He also explores the medium in its relation to text, sound, ethnographic film and new media. Orrantia is interested in questions of memory, history, dislocation and time, through projects on the aftermath of violence (Colombia and Mozambique); postcolonial cities and nostalgia;  autobiography and the Colombian cocaine trade;  and more recently, the anticolonial thinker Amilcar Cabral and his traces in Guinea-Bissau.

Awards include the Tierney Fellowship in Photography (2010) as well as various grants and residencies at research institutes, and has held solo exhibitions in Germany, Colombia, and South Africa, as well as participated in various group shows including the New York Photo Festival, Le Cube (Paris), Cape Town Month of Photography, Bonani Africa Festival of Photography, and Ethnographic Terminalia (New Orleans). Orrantia’s work has appeared in publications such as Sensate (A journal for experiments in critical media practice), Visual Anthropology Review, Iconos, and online platforms such as Foto8, Documentography,  and F-Stop.