Biography
Miguel began exploring photography in 1979 from his father in a small home built darkroom in the back of the garage. His father photographed the Chicano movement in the late 60s through the seventies. He often collaborated with other Chicano artist in San Antonio, TX and wrote several of his own formulas for color photography. This influenced Miguel to understand exposure, composition, and conventional darkroom techniques. Of which he committed much to memory, and commonly practices today with his old 35mm camera that was built before cameras had light meters. Miguel’s technical proficiency increased through the 1980s. He started to write his own formulas for color photographs. With his own formulas, he hand developed photographs yielding brilliant colors and black and white portions on a single print. This inspired the current bicultural concept Miguel practices today. Miguel learned computer based graphic arts in high school and by 1990 was scanning hand made prints into the computer. Miguel combined the scanned image with digital illustration methods to create the first series of the colorful people on photographs. With the traditional skill of analogous and proficiency in current digital imaging, Miguel continues to explore biculturalism by combining two different mediums representing the mix of two different cultures.