Juan Orrantia

Juan Orrantia is a Colombian photographer who spent much of his adult life in South Africa. Working through color, appropriation, mixed media and the photobook, Juan's work follows autobiographical threads through conditions of dislocation, postcoloniality, and representation. Juan's first book "Like Stains of Red Dirt" (Dalpine 2020) was winner of the Fiebre Dummy Award. He has also published "A Machete Pelao" (Cdf 2022), winner of the Fotolibro Latinoamericano Centro de Fotografia de Montevideo, and “O”, a companion to A Machete--as part of AñZ-Fotografia Expandida en Latinoamérica (Raya editorial, 2024). He also makes artist books, some of which are held in collections like the Smithsonian Museum of African Art Library, Biblioteca de Arte Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, The Ginsberg Center for the Book, and the Wits Museum of Art. Juan has received fellowships from the Smithsonian Institution, Tierney foundation, held residencies in South Africa, India and Colombia, and reviews of his work appear in Aperture, Nearest Truth, BJP, Africa is a Country, among others. Currently he lives in the US where he is Assistant Professor of Fine Art Photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He holds an MFA in Photography from Hartford Art School and a PhD from Yale University.