Bio

Antonio Salcedo Reyes is a Colombian photographer, born January 3rd, 1943 in Sogamoso, Boyacá. His fascination with photography began in his early childhood when his mother took him to his granduncle’s photography studio, where she worked as an assistant. As recalled by the artist: “We entered the darkroom and for the first time I saw how, out of nowhere, as if by an act of magic, an image would appear on the paper. That moment was absolutely unforgettable for me.”

His passion for photography flourished in the city of Bogota at the age of 17 when he acquired his first camera—a Voigtländer (with a bellows mechanism). Antonio is a self-taught artist, who learned photography by reading about it, at a time when there weren’t schools or universities in Bogota offering a formal program in the art. A few years later Antonio launched his career as a photographer and purchased his first 35 mm photo enlarger, turning one of the bathrooms in his house into a darkroom where he would spend much of his free time in the years to come.

Since 1968, Antonio began his professional career in the field of advertising photography.

At the end of high school, Antonio decided to explore another form of artistic expression and he signed up to study theatre at the Escuela Nacional de Arte Dramatico. This decision led to his early work as an actor and director of several theatre groups. Theatre awoke in Antonio another level of creativity and elevated his sense of social awareness.

In 1978, Antonio founded the first school of photography in the city of Bogotá, which he called “Taller Zona V” (an homage to the American photographer Ansel Adams (1902-1984), co-creator of the Zone System) where he taught for several years. In 1979 he was also appointed professor of photography for the department of Social Communications of Jorge Tadeo Lozano University, also in Bogotá.

By the year 2000, Antonio began to explore digital interactive photography, and 8 years later he founded, in partnership with his children, his company Movipixel®, which specializes in the creation and development of multimedia.

In the last 35 years Antonio has divided his time between advertising photography and documentary photography. He currently lives and works in Bogotá, Colombia, as a professional fine art and commercial photographer.