About me
Miguel Tovar Is a freelance photographer. First place winner of the World Press Photo 2020 in documentary short film category.
He works on news and breaking news, especially for The Dispatch / The New York Times. He also shoots documentaries for television and cinema. Some of his works are The 43 (Netflix, 2019), Matar Extraños (Nicolás Pereda, 2013), Skin of sky / bloody on Hearth (Andrea Bussmann, 2019-2020), and others in progress. He has worked in national and international media such as the Reforma newspaper (Mexico) and the Associated Press and Getty Images agencies, where he was head of the Mexico and Central America office. He studied Social Communication at UNAM, Mexico. He started working with a camera when he was 17 years old and since then he has never stopped doing it
in his own words:
I started using a camera when I was seventeen. By the time I enrolled at Mexico’s National Autonomous University, I had already started photographing professionally. Since then, I’ve worked for national and international media outlets, including Reforma, The Associated Press, and Getty Images, where I was previously one of the directors of the Mexico and Central America bureau.
After sixteen years of working primarily for newspapers and news agencies, I decided to change speeds. Now, I’m an independent journalist; I continue to photographs and cover news in Latin America, but in recent years, I have also worked on documentary projects, for AJ+, TeleSur, and The New York Times, and on films, for Mexican, Argentine, and Canadian productions.
The issues I have found myself covering most include migration, security, narcotrafficking, social movements, natural disasters, and crime. My recent work includes a Netflix series about the massacre of student from rural Mexico and other docummentary work granted an award by World Press Photo.
The camera, for me, is a tool I approach with respect and curiosity, whether I am working on a photo series or scenes for video, breaking news or long documentaries. I approach all of these visual projects with the same level of dedication to the craft, and the same level of enthusiasm.