Joaquin Trujillo fell in love with photography before he even picked up a camera. Although he liked art as a kid, he wanted to become a history teacher. To fulfill an arts requirement at college, Trujillo took a photography class. On Day One, the professor took his students to the darkroom, put his hand on a piece of paper, dipped it into a tray and watched it develop pronto on the paper.
“Instant art,” remembers Trujillo. “I never looked back.”
He abandoned his course of study and enrolled at ArtCenter in Pasadena, Calif., where he learned “the fundamentals of old masters style photography.” But not how to land a job. So after graduating, Trujillo took a stack of magazines and called the photo director of each. Travel and Leisure asked him to come in at 10:30 a.m. By 4 he had his first assignment.
Fifteen years later, the Los Angeles-born, Mexican-raised photographer has amassed an impressive roster of editorial jobs and his work has been shown at De Soto Gallery in Venice, Calif., New Art Projects in London and Colette in Paris, among others. For this piece, WWD Beauty Inc asked Trujillo to visit Mexico City and capture modern beauty in a city he knows intimately. “I try to express a place through light, texture and color,” Trujillo says, “to have that spirit and sense of the place through my work.”
Trujillo’s early love of history permeates every aspect of his work. Speaking about the opening portrait of this portfolio, he says, “She is such a Mexico City girl. Her piercings made me think about the Mayans and the Aztec. She is super contemporary and super chic and still has all these layers of history.”
