CARLOS JAIVER ORTIZ PHOTOGRAPHY ©

CARLOS JAIVER ORTIZ PHOTOGRAPHY ©

About me

Carlos Javier Ortiz

Bio

Carlos Javier Ortiz was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico and raised in Chicago, Illinois. He’s currently working on the Too Young To Die documentary, which he started five years ago as a comprehensive examination of youth violence in the United States and Central America. The project documents the lives of youth victims of violence as well as the teenage perpetrators of these crimes.

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.

In 2009 he won the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights: Domestic Photography award for “Too Young To Die.” He has also been a finalist for the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography and the Alexia Foundation professional grant. He was named the 2008 Illinois Press Photographer Association Photographer of the Year and has also won the Peter Lisagor Award for Photojournalism. In 2010 Carlos Javier was selected to be part of Facing Change: Documenting America (FCDA), a non-profit collective of acclaimed photographers and writers that will cover under-reported aspects of America’s most urgent issues and distribute the work through innovative online platforms.

His work has appeared in Ebony Magazine, Newsweek, Washington Post, The New York Times, TIME Magazine, NPR, Chicago Public Radio (WBEZ) The Guardian, Stern Magazine, the Biography Channel and other publications

Awards/Grants

2011 Community News Matters Local Reporting Award “Too Young Die”

2011 Illinois Arts Council Grant “Too Young Die”

2011 Aftermath Project finalists “Too Young Die”

2010 Casey Medals, Winner: “Fifty-fifty: The odds of graduating,” WBEZ-FM/Chicago Public Radio.

2010 Finalists for Alexia Foundation professional grant

2009 Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights: Domestic Photography award for “Too Young To Die”

2008 Finalists for the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography for “Too Young Die”

2008 Illinois Press Photographer Association Photographer of the Year – 1f place

2006 The Community Arts Assistance Program Grant

2005 Illinois Press Photographer Association Portfolio of the Year – 3rd place

2002 Peter Lisa or Award for Photojournalism – General Features Non-Daily

Exhibitions

2009 “Violent Realities” Gun Violence in the Americas. Gage Gallery, Chicago, IL. USA

2009 “Too Young to Die” The Midwest Photographers Project, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College, Chicago, IL. USA

2009 “American Poverty”, group show, Newseum, Washington D.C.

2008 “El Steno” Catherine Edelman Gallery, The Chicago Project Chicago, IL. USA

2001 “You are Here” exhibit Chicago Cultural Center

2001 City Gallery at the Water Tower

2001 Traveling Exhibition: French-American Center for Art, Paris, France June 7 - July 31, International Photography Festival, Aleppo, Syria September 2001 American Cultural Center, Alexandria, Egypt October 15 - November 15, 2001

De Melkweg, Amsterdam, The Netherlands December 2001 - January 2002 Industrie und Handelskammer, Frankfurt Germany, March 14 - April 5, 2002 SESC, Sao Paulo, Brazil, May - June 2002

Publications

11/2010 Utne Reader: Cutting class

02/2010 WBEZ Chicago Public Radio, Inside and Out, Young people and Juvenile Justice in Illinois

06/2009 New York Times: Gun Rulings Open Way to Supreme Court Review

08/2009 U.S. Catholic: Under The Gun, How violence takes a toll on our kids

02/2009 WBEZ Chicago Public Radio, 50-50 the odds of graduating Public high schools in Chicago

06/2008 New York Times: Gun Rulings Open Way to Supreme Court Review

02/2008 WBEZ Chicago Public Radios, Ghost Block

04/2008 Ebony Magazine, Beauty and Tragedy The Slaughter of The Innocents

05/2008 The Chicago Reporter, A Long Journey Ahead