Antonio Pérez
Spain
Biography
Antonio Pérez is a photographer and educator in the Communication, New Media and Journalism programme at CIEE, as well as a collaborator with the University of Seville. He regularly works with educational centres, art galleries, public institutions, NGOs and foundations connected to international cooperation, combining artistic practice with social engagement.
He holds degrees in Art History from the University of Seville and in Fine Arts from the University of Cologne. His work has been presented in numerous solo and group exhibitions, featured in publications such as the Diccionario de Photographers Andaluces, and recognised with various national and international awards.
In recent years, his practice has focused strongly on social memory and environmental issues. As part of the collective La Digitizadora de la Memoria Colectiva, he has developed projects centred on the recovery of social memory in neighbourhoods of Seville. His commitment to socially engaged photography was acknowledged with the “Carlos Pérez Siquier” Social Commitment Photography Award from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Granada for his work on climate change in fishing communities in Ghana and Togo.
His projects addressing environmental concerns have been exhibited internationally, including New Contemporary Ichthyologies at JIPFest in Jakarta, focusing on plastic pollution in marine ecosystems; The Sea Moves, the Sea Moves Us at FotoLenzburg in Switzerland; and Earth Photo 2021 at the Royal Geographical Society in London, where his work on climate change was also recognised. He was also awarded and exhibited at Contemporarte 2022 at the University of Huelva, participated in Pluri-Identitants at the MUA in Alicante, and took part in Cali Fest in Colombia.
Through projects such as Uniendo Pretéritos (Archaeology of a Shared Memory), developed between 2023 and 2024, Pérez continues to explore themes of collective memory, identity and recycling as both material and metaphor, building a practice that bridges documentary inquiry, artistic research and community collaboration.
Project
“New Contemporary Ichthyology” by Antonio Pérez is a documentary-driven photographic project that visually investigates the complex and often neglected relationship between humans and the marine environment, with a particular focus on plastic pollution and its impact on oceanic ecosystems.
Pérez’s practice — rooted in documentary observation and long-term engagement with social and environmental issues — reframes ichthyology not as a purely scientific discipline but as a contemporary visual inquiry into how human activity reshapes aquatic life and natural landscapes. Through his images, the work encourages viewers to reflect on the fragility of marine ecosystems, the pervasive presence of pollution and the cultural narratives that shape our understanding of the ocean’s future.
