About

MA9
Fine art photography by Marco Aurelio.

ARTIST STATEMENT
Driven by personal histories and inquiries, I photograph the individual in the street and their habitat to create site-specific visual ethnographies [non-exclusively] referencing identity, culture, power, and socioeconomic class. I am borrowing language from the [art] painting canon and experimenting with the aleatory disassembly of the photograph to invoke visual meditations on being. My fine art photography artworks are how my mind feels living in my neighborhood, in our epoch, and in this country.

BIO
Born and raised at the foot of the South-American Andes to a family of generational farmers, I was exposed to native oral histories, pre-Columbian indigenous ritual-art and cosmologies, magical-realism experiences, and sociopolitical upheaval. I have a Liberal Arts degree from New York University that includes coursework in European history, anthropology, and Western philosophy. I have completed coursework in photography from The International Center of Photography and The School of Visual Arts; archaeology and anthropology from The City College at CUNY; and writing and music history from Columbia University. Backgrounds in photojournalism, portrait and commercial photography inform my fine art photography practice. I live and work in New York City.

AWARDS
Man at Sunset photograph from Mask series, Editors’ Picks Competition Gallery, Lens Culture Street Photography Awards 2021.
Los Trabajos y Los Dias, Official Selection, XV Annual Latin-American Documentary Photography Exhibition. Antioquia Museum. Medellin, Colombia, 2009.

FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITIONS
Hypertropico, Antioquia University, Nutibara Gallery. Medellin, Colombia, 2008.
Surfaces: Havasupai, Emergence, Yellowstone, School of Visual Arts. New York City, 2006 (solo).
dis [border] solve, Dinnerware Arts. Tucson, AZ, 2006.
H2O, Dinnerware Arts. Tucson, AZ, 2006.
Surfaces: Southwest by NYC, Photography on the Square. Flagstaff, AZ, 2005 (solo).

CONTACT
Email:  marco@ma9.co
Tel:      347.772.9370 @ New York City