Julián Cardona (photojournalist)

Julián Cardona was born in Zacatecas, Mexico, on August 18, 1960. His family moved to Ciudad Juárez when he was a young child. Raised by his grandparents, and with only a ninth grade education, he taught himself to use a camera professionally by age twenty. He worked in the maquiladora industry until 1991, when he moved back to Zacatecas to teach photography.[3][1][2][7]

Although he had earlier done some photography for tabloids, in 1993 Cardona began to work professionally as a photojournalist at the Ciudad Juárez newspapers El Fronterizo and El Diario de Juárez. He co-authored many newspaper and magazine articles along with several books, including Juarez: The Laboratory of Our Future and Exodus/Exodo, both with journalist Charles Bowden. His photographs have also been profiled in several major exhibitions, including Nothing to See (1995), Borders and Beyond (2001), Lines of Sight: Views of the U.S./Mexican Border (2002),[8] Photography Past/Forward: Aperture at 50 (2003), the History of the Future (2009),[9] and Stardust: Memories of the Calle Mariscal (2013).[10] Cardona worked for several years as a Reuters correspondent in Mexico beginning in 2009, and he also was a photography editor in Mexico City. During the final years of his life he worked as a freelance journalist and photographer.[1][2][3][5][4][7]

Cardona was considered to be one of the most important photographers documenting the economic challenges and criminal drug-related violence in Mexico along the U.S. border, especially in Ciudad Juárez.[2][3][5][4] His photographs were sometimes criticized for their graphic portrayal of violence, including torture, rape, and murder victims.[11] Other critics observed that Cardona linked the extreme violence and femicide in border cities like Juarez with globalization and especially the influx of Maquiladoras (factories),[12] something that Cardona himself acknowledged and emphasized in interviews.[4][13][14][15][16] Interviewed on the PBS NewsHour in 2012, Cardona said that "It's an important story, how a city becomes the most violent city on earth. I was able to do it, and I'm OK with that. It's my job."[17]

• Juarez: The Laboratory of Our Future, 1998, Aperture Press (with Charles Bowden)
• Morir Despacio: Una Mirada al Interior de las Maquiladoras en la Frontera E.U./México, 2000
• No One is Illegal: Fighting Violence and State Repression on the U.S.-Mexico Border, 2006, Haymarket Books (with Justin Akers Chacon and Mike Davis)
• Exodus/Exodo, 2008, University of Texas Press (with Charles Bowden)
• "Market Driven Merciless Violence," Justice Rising, Spring 2008, pp. 8-9
• Murder City: Ciudad Juárez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields, 2011, Nation Books, (with Charles Bowden)
• Stardust: Memories of the Calle Mariscal, 2014, University of Texas at El Paso, Rubin Center for the Visual Arts
• Abecedario de Juárez: an illustrated lexicon, 2021, University of Texas Press (with Alice Leora Briggs)[18]

Cardona died of natural causes on September 21, 2020, in Ciudad Juárez.[19][20]

Cardona received the Cultural Freedom Prize from the Lannan Foundation in 2004.[21] Cardona’s photographic archives are preserved by the Tom and Ethel Bradley Center in the University Library, Special Collections and Archives, California State University, Northridge.[22][2][23]