Artist Statement
My photographs explore the lives of a people; their experiences closely mirroring my own. I was born in Manizales, Colombia and raised in Riverside, after my parents, brother, and I moved there in 1981. Paterson is a working class city, similar to other working class cities where my subjects live. I moved to Chicago in 2012 and began to photograph the Great Lakes Reload (GLR) on Chicago’s far southeast side.
Process Statement
I familiarize myself with my subjects personal anecdotes & experiences which allows me to embrace the details, beauty, & drama of the mundane, that unfolds around me as I photograph them.
Juan Giraldo is a photographer currently living and working in Chicago, Illinois; he received his MFA in May of 2015 from Columbia College’s photography department. He was born in Manizales, Colombia and raised in Paterson, New Jersey. He received his BFA with a concentration in photography in May of 2009 from William Paterson University. Awards include Photo Lucida Critical Mass Top 50, Photo Lucida Critical Mass Finalist,The Center for Photography at Woodstock A-I-R Program, Dwight D. Follett Fellowship Full Tuition Award from Columbia College Chicago, Honorable Mention in, En Foco’s, People Places and Things, Brozowski Scholarship and Fiftieth Reunion Endowed Scholarship both from William Paterson University. Exhibitions include, Filter Photo: On the Shelf, Curated by Kelli Connell, Filter Photo, Chicago, IL 2016 Aqui, Perspective Gallery, Evanston, IL, Art Now 2016: New Directions in Contemporary Photography, Ann Arbor Art Center, Ann Arbor, MI The Fine Art of Photography, Plymouth Center for the Arts, Plymouth, MA Perceived Realities 2015 MFA Thesis Exhibition, Columbia College Chicago President’s Residence (solo show), Paterson Art Walk, Aljira Fine Art (group shows), What Work Is, Englewood Library (solo show), Figurative Impulse, Oualie Arts Gallery, and What Work Is, American Labor Museum (solo show). His work explores the personal interior spaces of working people, (in particular the employees of Great Lakes Reload and his family in Paterson, New Jersey) the textures of a working life and the banal indicators of domesticity that shaped his view of the world, both as a first generation immigrant and laborer. In addition to this work he continues to photograph his family as part of an ongoing project in which he looks at his relationship with his parents.
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