Jose Lopez & Luis Medina
Jose Lopez (b. 1959) is a Mexican‑American photographer whose work chronicles the rhythms and rituals of urban Latino communities. After earning his BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York, he returned to Los Angeles in the mid‑1980s to document street life in East L.A. His landmark series “Border Crossings” (1989–1992) captured the hopes and struggles of families navigating life on both sides of the U.S.–Mexico border, earning him a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Lopez’s black‑and‑white portraits are noted for their intimate composition and emotional honesty—children playing soccer under freeway overpasses, shopkeepers arranging merchandise at dawn, neighborhood murals serving as communal backdrops. His monograph Ciudad Reflejada (1995) cemented his reputation, and his work has since been exhibited at the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach. Lopez continues to live and work in Southern California, exploring new projects that illuminate the evolving story of America’s urban landscapes.
Luis Medina (b. 1973) is a Spanish fine‑art photographer whose large‑format color images explore memory, place, and the passage of time. Trained at the Royal College of Art in London, he first gained attention with “Desierto Interior” (2005–2008), a series of deserted Mediterranean farmhouses that speak to decay and renewal. Medina’s later project, “Echoes of Water” (2012–2016), used long exposures to transform coastal landscapes into meditative abstractions, earning him a solo exhibition at Tate Modern’s The Tanks in 2017.
Medina’s photographs combine meticulous technical craft—often using analog processes and custom lenses—with a lyrical approach to composition, inviting viewers to consider how environments embed personal and collective histories. His work is represented in the collections of the Tate Modern, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. He divides his time between Madrid and the south of France, where he is currently developing a new series on abandoned industrial sites.
