Detailed Biographical Information
Julián Cardona
Born in Zacatecas, Mexico, Mr. Cardona was a small child when his family moved to Juárez. He attended school there, received vocational training, and worked as a technician in a maquiladora (a foreign owned factory), where he worked to earn money to buy his first camera. A self-taught photographer, in 1991 he moved back to Zacatecas to teach beginning photography at the Centro Cultural de Zacatecas. Two years later he started his photojournalism career at the publications El Fronterizo and El Diario de Juárez. In 1995 he organized a group show called “Nada que ver” (Nothing to See), which contained the work of photojournalists who document the daily violence, death and poverty that accompanies life in Juárez. Photographs of that show were featured in Harpers Magazine in 1996. In 1998 Mr. Cardona’s work appeared in the book Juárez: The Laboratory of Our Future, which features essays by Charles Bowden, Noam Chomsky, and Eduardo Galeano. Mr. Cardona’s photographs of the interior of maquiladoras in Juárez were published in Aperture No. 159, “Camera of Dirt.”
Mr. Cardona’s photographs have been featured in exhibits in Mexico, the United States, and Europe.