CARLOS J. ORTIZ PHOTOGRAPHY
Carlos Javier Ortiz
Bio
Carlos Javier Ortiz was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico and raised in Chicago, Illinois. As a teenager, his love of photography led him to work at a traveling carnival to save money for photography equipment and college tuition. Later, Carlos Javier attended Columbia College in Chicago, where he studied photojournalism. Following college, Carlos Javier was a staff photographer for Chicago In The Year 2000 (CITY 2000), a yearlong project documenting the city and its inhabitants. He worked for several years as a photojournalist for newspapers in Philadelphia and New Jersey. Carlos Javier is currently working on a cross-cultural youth violence project, which documents adolescents in Chicago and Guatemala. The project documents the lives of youth victims of violence as well as the teenage perpetrators of these crimes. Carlos Javier’s work is sponsored by the Blue Earth Alliance, a non-profit organization that supports documentary photography projects of endangered cultures, threatened environments, or current topics of social concern. Carlos Javier was a finalist for the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography for his project, Too Young To Die in 2008. Carlos Javier recently received the 2009 domestic photography award from the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights for the Too Young To Die project.
His work has appeared in Ebony Magazine, Newsweek, Washington Post, The New York Times, The Times of London, The Guardian, Stern Magazine, Internazionale Magazine, and other publications.
Awards and Grants
Winner Domestic Photography award: the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights
Finalists for the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography for his project,
Too Young To Die
Illinois Press Photographer Association - 2008Photographer of the Year – 1f place.
Blue Earth Alliance is a 501(c) 3,non-profit 2008.
Illinois Press Photographer Association - 2007 Portfolio of the Year – 2nd place.
The Community Arts Assistance Program Grant - 2006
Illinois Press Photographer Association - 2005 Portfolio of the Year – 3rd place.
Illinois Best of Photojournalism - 2004 “Campaign Election Night Story.”
Peter Lisagor Award for Photojournalism – General Features Non-Daily - 2002.
New Jersey Associated Press Photographer of the Month - July 2002
Photography Exhibitions
This Side of Hope beauty within tragedy of urban life, a visual witness to the human
condition and the looming presence of hope.
The Architrouve in Chicago, 2007
You Are Here: Chicago in the Year 2000, group show, Chicago Cultural Center 2001
The Austin Connection, group show, Chicago Public Library/Austin Branch, 2000
CITY 2000 Weekly Exhibit, group show, CityGallery at the Historic Water Tower, 2000
The First Week of 2000, group show, Gallery 312, 2000