Manuel Bayo Gisbert

b. 1997, Mexico City.

I am a culturally-Catholic visual anthropologist. My work is exists somewhere between journalism and art, and focuses on my relationship with the history of my homeland, Mexico.

Both my photographs and my writing have been published in The New York Times and other international media outlets.  I was a recipient of the Jan Mulder Scholarship, a full scholarship to attend the International Center of Photography’s (ICP) One-Year Certificate Program in Photojournalism, from which I graduated in 2023. I studied a bachelor’s in film directing at Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica (Mexico) and was part of the 2021 class of Centro de la Imagen’s Seminario de Producción Fotográfica.

I was a finalist of the Counter Histories initiative at the Magnum Foundation and have taken part in activities and exhibitions with the VII Academy, Festival Internacional de Fotografía en Valparaíso (FIFV), Kranj Foto Festival and Sphere Festival.  I have been a student of artists such as Antoine D’Agata, Sohrab Hura, Alex Webb & Rebecca Norris Webb, Sabiha Çimen, Joan Fontcuberta, Laida Lertxundi, Lynne Sachs, Stefan Kaegi, Clifford Owens, Felipe Cazals and Alonso Ruizpalacios. In 2024, I was selected for the Hamburg Portfolio Review.

I have given self-documentation workshops to young people in both the United States and Mexico; the results of these workshops have been exhibited as collaborative pieces.

Besides my work in photography, I have also done short films, performance, installations and music videos. My short films have been exhibited at Mexico’s Cineteca Nacional and other venues in the United Sates, South Korea and Russia. In 2020, I curated a large retrospective of the works of R. Bruce Elder at Cineteca Nacional and Mexico’s Institut Français d’Amérique Latine (IFAL).

I am a member of the Brigada Nacional de Búsqueda de Personas Desaparecidas (National Brigade of Search of Missing People) and am currently developing a number of photographic and filmic projects.