Featured Artist...Joel Salcido

Our "Featured Artist" this week is from Austin,Texas where he currently works as an editorial and fine art photographer.
Joel Salcido started out as a staff photographer at the El Paso TImes and also traveled in Latin America for USA Today, receiving multiple awards, several for his coverage of life in Cuba and the inhalant abuse on the US-Mexican border. He worked his way to becoming Photo Editor and in 1991 he decided to branch out and pursue commercial work before his decision to move his family to Spain to work on his fine art photography.

"I made a commitment to use the camera as an instrument that would reveal beauty and truth in its simplest form.  And so “Hecho en Juarez” came to be.  Then came my year in Spain from which, “Spain: Millennium Past” showed me that the true wonder of tradition is anchored by an incessant human effort to celebrate life.  Most recently, the “Roma: Entre Fantasmas”  also follows tradition as a romantic view of local folklore in this border town where ranch, horse and religion still dominate. "

His artistic pursuit with a journalist's background marries well in his images and subject approach  painting his vision with its own tone. Each body takes on its own flavor not just from what he sees but the colors he sees it through, from his portraits to his travels, with excellent technical execution as well as artistic judgment.

  
"As a journalist, I spent half of my career framing tragedy and disaster and sometimes glorified in it.  Eventually it chipped away and eroded my hope in mankind to a skeletal resemblance of what it once was.  In my need to rediscover hope, I began to seek refuge in what I deemed, “visual poetry.” "  

His decision to leave the world of steady paychecks took courage and self belief in what he really wanted to achieve, he did and still does because for Joel this is more than a business, it's a love that continues producing work for publications like USA Today and Texas Highways along with collections in The Austonian, The Witliff Southwestern and Mexican Photography Collection at Texas State University-San Marcos, The El Paso Museum of Art, the Harry Ransom Humanities Center at UT Austin and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
 
His viewpoint.." For more than 20 years photography has been my companion on this journey we call life.  Many times it has escorted me into the darkest corners of human existence.  Other times it has opened the gates of light where visual poetry and beauty reside.  Photography can easily fall into the trap of celebrating the worst aspects of ourselves and it is for that reason I continue to print my awareness of hope so in the end it may help us all understand the beauty still within us."

More of Joel Salcido's work can be seen here