Miguel Armando Salazar

Biography

I have been a documentary photographer since 2004. My first book, PRELUDIO, came out in 2015, and my second book, CONTRA EL TIEMPO, in 2022. I was a documentary film and film aesthetics professor at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito from 2005 to 2022, where I advised more than a hundred documentary projects. I have a Master's Degree in Screenwriting from the University of Barcelona. For a while, I was a Director of Photography. I won an award for best cinematography for the film EN EL NOMBRE DE LA HIJA (2010) at the International Film Festival of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (2012) and the Recognition of Cultural Merit MEDALLA BICENTENARIO - Ministry of Culture of Ecuador (2012).   I was a cameraman in the documentary LOS CANGREJOS SE ACERCAN DE LADO (about childhood cancer) and filmed a documentary about contemporary dance (in the editing stage). 

Since 2010, my subject of interest has been my family and the growth of my children, whom I have photographed and filmed for over a decade. Since 2022, I have pursued an MFA in photography and film at the University of Calgary (Alberta, Canada).

My work combines traditions of photography and personal documentary film with an emphasis on the language of cinema as a creator of its space-time and photography as evidence of human relationships and their ambiguities. I recognize the particularities of the digital and film mediums as territories in dialogue and feedback. Some of my themes explore the relationship between space and subject, time as narrative, family and social bonds and the documentation of identity construction processes. I document reality through an experiential and subjective approach and try to generate meaning from the revaluation of the every day, the association and juxtaposition in film editing and photographic portraiture techniques.