Juan Orrantia is a photographer, artist, academic and educator. His practice articulates photography, appropriation and academic research to interrogate historical narratives and experiences of looking and being seen. Born and raised in Colombia, and having spent much of his adult life in South Africa, his work builds on experiences of dislocation, postcoloniality and questions of representation developed through expanded photographic approaches related to color, archives and the photobook. 

Orrantia has published two (awarded) photographic monographs as well as artist books, which are held in collections like MoMA, New York, Tokyo Museum of Photography, the Smithsonian Museum of African Art Library, Washington, D.C., Biblioteca de Arte Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisboa, and The Ginsberg Center for the Book, Johannesburg. Fellowships awarded include Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, Tierney Fellowship, and exhibitions at Silver Eye Center for Photography, Pittsburgh, Bamako Biennale and Centro de la Imagen, Mexico City. Reviews of his work appear in Aperture, Nearest Truth, British Journal of Photography, and Africa is a Country, among others. Orrantia is Assistant professor of Fine Art Photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and holds an MFA in Photography and a PhD in Anthropology. He spends his time between Rochester (NY), South Africa and Colombia.

Web: http://www.juanorrantia.com ; IG: @orrantia_juan_ ; Other: Lenscratch Article

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