Born in Phoenix, this Arizonan has literally dedicated all of his life to photography. At 17 he won one of the National Scholastic Achievement Awards. He was hardly 16 years old when his pictures were published by the local paper The Valley Views. He studied with Allen Dutton at Phoenix College and at Arizona State University with the historian Bill Jay attending workshops and lectures by Minor White, Ansel Adams, W. Eugene Smith and Robert Heineken among others. After college he went to work for Media Productions, a commercial studio in Tempe, with photographer Chris Bassett.
After a short tour of the rest of Europe in 1981 he arrived in Spain to visit friends and decided to stay. In 1983 his picture stories began appearing in the Spanish press: ABC, Ya, Interviu, Diario 16, Garbo and Semana. First Dunia magazine and later other publications of the G+J group commissioned portraits and photo-journalism, while he began collaborating with the Image Works in New York and Camera Press in London. In 1987 The Associated Press contracted his services as stringer for their Madrid office. In 1989 he was recruited by a group of journalists forming a new national daily in Spain: El Mundo. As staff photographer/editor he covered local, national and international events for both the newspaper and the Sunday color magazine until 1998 when he left the paper. Since then he works regularly for a number of clients both commercial and editorial including his previous employer's direct competitors.
He has been awarded five of the annual Fotopress prizes and two Fotoprix for various news photographs and essays. An exposition of his Osborne Bull series, which opened in the Bellas Artes in Madrid in 1996, is available through the representation of the Centro Andaluz de la Fotografia in Almeria. He has published two books: "Imagenes para la Dignidad" published by La Fabrica/RENFE and "El Toro de Osborne" by Osborne. He has also given conferences to journalism and photography students in the Universidad Complutense and San Pablo CEU universities in Madrid, the Universitat Pompeu-Fabra in Barcelona as well as the Facultad de Derecho de La Universidad de Cordoba and taught numerous workshops in Spain. From 2006 to 2009 he was a member of the Master Class faculty at EFTI in Madrid.
Recently returned from Spain he has shown work in the Burton Barr Library in Phoenix with the INFOCUS group of the Phoenix Art Museum and is a founding member of the Arizona Photographers Alliance.
From a text by
Jorge Churba