JOE BLACK · JOSE NEGRO

Architect and Photographer. Arrigorriaga, Spain, 1973.

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Based in Montevideo since 2011.

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My love affair with photography began in the 1980s with a Yashica Minister D I used to sneak out of my aita's cupboard — a device that seemed, to my teenage self, the most magical thing I had ever come across. I went on to study photography at university, and a camera has been by my side ever since.

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I am an architect as well as a photographer, and that matters. Drawing plans, sections and elevations taught me to read a place before inhabiting it: to understand how light enters, how volumes are arranged, where the solid is and where the void. That is why my images are, above all, compositional decisions — and why they often speak as much about the people in them as about the space that contains them.

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My training has been built through ongoing dialogue with masters of Latin American and North American documentary photography — Alex Webb, Nelson Garrido, Wilson Prada, Ricardo Armas, among others — and through the continuous mentorship of Aaron Sosa, my tutor since 2018.

Since 2022, I have been a teacher at IMAGO.

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In 2018 I deepened my documentary practice with the project "Sólo por un dólar" ("Just for a Dollar"), spending several months following the daily life of a rural public school in Uruguay's interior. The project culminated in a photographic exhibition at the school itself and three audiovisual pieces.

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My work as a photobook author began with three documentary titles published in Uruguay: Redalco (2019), Umbelé (2020) and AITA (2025).

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I keep looking from that dual place: the one who thinks spaces, and the one who observes them.

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Phone +598 95 356 686

Email jinegrov@gmail.com

Instagram @joeblackph