Juan Orrantia

Teaches at Penumbra Foundation

Juan Orrantia makes photographic works concerned with questions of representation, perception and history. Embracing photography’s uncertainty and contingency he works through the destabilizing possibilities of color, appropriation and intervention, and the photobook.

Like Stains of Red Dirt was awarded the Fiebre Dummy Award and published by Dalpine (2020), forthcoming VerdeRojo received the first prize Latin American Photobook Centro de Fotografia de Montevideo, and self-published artist books are in collections like the Smithsonian Museum of African Art Library, Biblioteca de Arte Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian and The Tierney Foundation.  Reviews of his work appear in Aperture, Nearest Truth, BJP, Africa is a Country, among others. Juan was born in Colombia and lives in Johannesburg, South Africa, and has lectured at universities and photo institutions. He holds an MFA in Photography from Hartford Art School and a Phd in anthropology from Yale University.