Having moved from Cali, Colombia in 1975, Lalo Borja has been recording the forms, nostalgia and beauty of the habited world through his black, white, and gray tones that reference the subtlety of time passed.

After moving to Toronto in 1975, Borja began his work as a photo journalist until his return to Colombia in 1982. A couple of years later, he returned to living abroad in San Francisco, California where he delved into the broad artist community there while work in a photography laboratory. The influence of his artistic influence are evident in his photographs of this time, capturing the wind-blown west coast of California.

Returning to Colombia in 1994 initiated another brief period of capturing his homeland as seen in the religious image of a boy on Ash Wednesday. During this time, he became an integral part of the visual arts faculty of the University of Valle, the Institute of Fine Arts, and the University of San Buenaventura. In 2000, he moved abroad again, this time to Kent, about an hour outside of London, to teach photography at the Canterbury College. He has since stayed in Kent, teaching and capturing his images, often traveling to hidden corners and brightly lit open spaces throughout Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, and England.

“There have been many moments of satisfaction in the last thirty years of wandering across several continents, and countless photographs have been found around an unsuspecting corner, or deeper behind the reflection of a window pane – where the unknown magic of the world has shown its face,” describes Borja.

Lalo Borja: Return proudly presents a collective presentation of images taken over the past 30 years in Borja’s first exhibition in Colombia since 1998. In addition to the wholely pictorialist imagery, Galería MÜ will also be presenting images that include a selection of portraits by Borja of artists that include Oscar Muñoz, Ruben Blades, Susan Sontag, Lucy Tejada and Allan Ginsberg, amongst others.