Marcelo Biglia was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina and now lives in Dublin. He is a free-lance photographer with a particular interest in documentary photography.

Marcelo has a uniquely refreshing perspective on ideas, customs and arts of various cultures. He longed to travel from a young age and discovered while travelling how photography was a perfect tool to document the life styles of people he came across.

When Marcelo completed school he knew his talents and interests lay in the field of art and design. He embarked on a course in graphic design at university in Buenos Aires and discovered how much he used his personal photography as the basis for his design work.

During term-breaks, Marcelo travelled and his first major excursion with his camera was a trip from Buenos Aires to Peru by land.

From this early age he remembers how he never entertained the idea of flying from one place to another as if being ‘transplanted’, rather he travelled by land through Bolivia, Brazil, Chile and Peru. Though he had an old-fashioned camera, this experience captured his love for cultural diversity and photography.

It was on this trip to Peru that Marcelo met an Irish couple. They extended an invitation for him to come to Ireland where they had planned a canoeing trip from Sligo to Dublin. He later accepted their invitation and embarked on his first trip to Ireland at the age of twenty five.

He canoed from North Sligo down the Shannon and connected with the Grand Canal and this was his first experience of Dublin. He loved Ireland and from here he set about a trip around Europe again satisfying his deep interests in culture and travel photography.

He returned to Argentina and embarked on another trip from Guatemala through Mexico and North America. He remembers while staying in a hostel in Chiapas in Mexico that he felt very strongly about leaving South America for some time to experience life in another country entirely.

He reminisced about Ireland and found “it was full of good memories and very special people.” He returned here for one year and he has been here happily ever since.

During this time, his passion for photography has grown from strength to strength. Marcelo, being quite a talented drummer, linked into the music scene from his early days here. He has since been commissioned by various well-known musicians.

Though Marcelo has a real love for music and portrait photography, he continually finds himself drawn to the area of documentary photography. He strives to continue developing his personal passion for cultural knowledge and continues to express this through photography.

He has also worked for a number of years for well-known international and Irish photographers in the world of fashion, where he gained great experience and enhanced his knowledge of the more technical aspects of photography.

It was after a trip to Jordan and Egypt in 2001 that it became clear to Marcelo that photography was no longer just a hobby but a future career. His love of capturing cultures, meeting with the people and exploring their worlds, whether simplistic, complex, rich or poor was where Marcelo found his drive and enthusiasm for his photography.

In 2003 he set about planning a trip from Dublin via Turkey and from there to travel by land to India with his camera. Marcelo and a co-photographer/ writer left Dublin and flew to Istanbul and from there travelled by land through Turkey, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan and finally into India.

This particular excursion took six months and to date is one of the most valuable and memorable experiences he has encountered. Not only was he discovering more and more his love for photography, he was also discovering in himself his own gift dealing with people that he was photographing and how they touched his inner senses.

It was during one of Marcelo’s visits home to Buenos Aires that he found himself really absorbed by the Tango experience like never before. It awakened his early life experiences with nostalgia.

He was introduced to an anthropologist and they set about co-creating a portfolio of the Tango and the social role it plays among the people of the city. He has captured these jubilant moments with his camera and he plans an exhibition in Dublin in October.

Marcelo Biglia 086 346 6564, marcelobiglia@gmail.com

Pictures clockwise from bottom: Pakistan; Baby boy, Varanisi, India; Uch Sharif, Pakistan.