About Ian

I am Ian Melgarejo, I am a Miami-born interdisciplinary photographer and collagist. In 2016 I graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from New World School of the Arts. During my time in NWSA I was already experimenting with boundaries in photography with light painting, long exposures and multiple exposures. My school encouraged me to further push the confines of various mediums and those processes continue to inspire my work in new directions, this is especially true for my collages now.

My camera now usually focuses on the city around me, for a decade now I’ve been photographing Miami to discover the overlooked portions of an ever-growing, ever-changing landscape. Painters like Edward Hopper and Wayne Thiebaud as well as my own collage have helped me look at the architectural landscape in a unique way. Swaths of buildings and the surrounding infrastructure turn into flattened palettes of colors, shapes, and patterns.

My collages are more personal, I create and experiment with them to be able to express my personal stories, feelings, or anecdotes. Collage allows me a certain level of control, but there’s also an undeniable looseness to it; I work in between those areas with different techniques and adding different material to achieve a specific narrative. I continue to explore the many facets and avenues that photography and collage can send me down. My aim is to create art that shares an experience, whether it is how we perceive the environment around us or evoking emotion and curiosity about a visual narrative.