About Me

JOSÉ LUIS RODRÍGUEZ MALDONADO

For more than three decades, I have worked through the language of photography, observing how consciousness manifests in processes of forgiveness, resilience, and collective transformation.

My practice as a documentary photographer is grounded in two principles: consciousness and creativity. The image does not illustrate or explain; it functions as a space for construction and reflection.

I understand consciousness as a transformation of perception capable of reorganizing experience, and creativity as an active force that reshapes the way individuals perceive and act in everyday life. From this perspective, photography establishes a territory where lived experience becomes visible and where new forms of relation can be imagined.

I develop long-term projects in contexts shaped by human rights and environmental concerns. My work addresses processes of conflict, rupture, and transformation, observing how individuals and communities construct responses that allow them to rebuild bonds and redefine their place in the world.

The core of my work lies in the forms of clarity and vital reorganization that emerge within lived experience. The image suggests that there is always another way to understand and inhabit reality.

Professional career

My research is sustained through proximity and prolonged engagement with real human processes. Rather than focusing on traumatic events themselves, my work examines the mechanisms through which individuals and communities reconstruct meaning after experiences such as forced disappearance, displacement, sexual violence, loss of territory, or abandonment.

Forgiveness, return, memory, and respect for lived experience appear as concrete practices. Photography records these processes without dramatization, positioning them within the visible field as verifiable expressions of vital reorganization.

In recent years, I have expanded my research toward new languages and territories. I am currently developing Before the Map, a visual exploration initiated in the United States addressing territory, Indigenous memory, and everyday landscape, alongside Evidence: Who Consumes Whom?, a recent project that employs forensic photographic language and visual metaphor to examine the presence of harmful ingredients in mass-consumption food systems. In this body of work, products are treated as evidence. The controlled and precise aesthetic prioritizes formal clarity. The images propose a rigorous observation of normalized systems of consumption.

My career has received international recognition. In 2010, I was awarded the Colombian–Swiss National Photography Prize for La casa tomada. In 2012, I was selected in the Professional Competition of the Sony World Photography Awards (Photojournalism & Contemporary Issues). I have participated in PhotoEspaña and in exhibitions linked to historical memory processes in Latin America and Europe. I received First Prize in the National Center for Historical Memory of Colombia competition for What Fear Left Us, as well as First Prize in the Memory and Tolerance competition organized by the Colombian and Mexican Consulates in the United States.

I have published three books in collaboration with cultural and academic institutions, including La hora del encuentro, Mujeres que no parieron para la guerra, Desplazando las tinieblas, and other texts connected to historical memory processes in Colombia.

In 2018, the United States Government granted me Permanent Residence under the EB-1A Extraordinary Ability category, and in December 2024 I obtained U.S. citizenship.

I am the founder of Visible Memory, a platform dedicated to visual research, education, and the preservation of collective memory.