Manuel Bayo Gisbert

Mexico City, Mexico

(Taken from Manuel Bayo Gisbert's website)

b. 1997.

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

Both my photographs and my writing have been published in The New York Times and other international news outlets, as well as appearing in art publications.

I am currently expanding and completing chapters of my extensive project A Solid Home, on enforced disappearance and the history of violence in Mexico; it includes sections of both film and still photography.

In September 2024, I exhibited A Solid Home in my first solo show, with the venue being the Rayburn House Office Building of the United States Congress, in Washington D.C. It was organized and funded by Amnesty International, the National Security Archive, Global Exchange and the Latin American Working Group.

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 (CCC) 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, Sphere Festival and the Hamburg Portfolio Review. 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, Felipe Cazals and Alonso Ruizpalacios.

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). Besides my work in film and photography, I have done performance, installations and music videos. 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.

I am a member of the Brigada Nacional de Búsqueda de Personas Desaparecidas (National Brigade of Search of Missing People).