Hola, queridos amigos— welcome back to Sombra Y Cultura. Happy New Year!
I’m so glad you’re here as we step into another year of stories, images, and perspectives that help us see the world a little differently.

It feels fitting to begin this year with a photographer whose work isn’t just about places — but about how we know them, feel them, and imagine them. someone who examines the world from angles we rarely consider. Someone who reminds us that landscapes are not empty spaces… they are living, breathing maps of culture, conflict, history, identity, and sometimes, contradiction.

Today, we’re talking about Pablo López Luz— a Mexican photographer whose work re-frames how we see cities and borders, the natural and the built, the visible and the unseen.

Pablo López Luz was born in Mexico City in 1979, and his life has been tightly bound up with the city’s scale, energy, and complexity. From an early age, he was surrounded by art — his father was a gallerist, and that exposure sewed visual thinking deep into his world.

He studied at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City and later completed a Master’s in Visual Arts at New York University / International Center of Photography in 2006. That combination —rooted in Mexican identity and expanded through global artistic training —would become central to his vision.

What sets López Luz apart right from the start is his approach to landscape.

In a time when many photographers frame landscapes as scenic or dramatic, López Luz looks for the implicit human presence within environment and architecture — especially where human and land meet in complex, often troubled ways.

One of his earliest major projects, Terrazo, came out of necessity — a personal response to how urban sprawl was consuming the land and reshaping human life and landscape in Mexico City and beyond.

Instead of photographing people, he photographed their imprint — vast grids of city growth, fractured terrains, winding roads, and zones where concrete eats away at the earth. His vantage points are often high, expansive, aerial — placing city and countryside on the same visual plane, challenging us to think about them together, not separately.

In these photographs, the human presence is felt but not seen. We feel it in the geometry of streets and grids and in the disruptions of nature. That tension becomes a fundamental theme throughout his work.

Over the years, López Luz has created several notable projects, each one challenging us to reevaluate what photography can do.

In Terrazo, López Luz spent several years photographing the sprawling megalopolis that is Mexico City.

From above, the city unfolds like a massive organism — its patterns, signals, irregularities, and collisions with the natural world all documented with clarity and quiet intensity. Roads, neighborhoods, industrial zones, green spaces — all become part of a visual dialogue about how humans shape land and how land, in turn, shapes us.

This wasn’t just aesthetics. It was a study in transformation — how growth accelerates, how boundaries blur, and how the promise of modernization often arrives at the cost of connection to the natural world. (You can view some of Pablo's work here)

Another iconic project, Frontera, looks at one of the most politically charged spaces in the world — the U.S.–Mexico border.

Rather than photographing the border as a set of politics, checkpoints, or patrols, López Luz lifts the conversation up into the land itself — photographing from the air to show how the border inscribes itself on the land.

In these images, the border becomes a scar, a line cut into the earth that embodies economic disparity, migration, aspiration, exclusion, and overlap. And in presenting it from above, López Luz invites us to see it not as a static division but as a historical and physical construct shaped by human intervention.

These are landscapes that are both familiar and strange — at once real and symbolic.

López Luz hasn’t limited himself to aerial work. In Pyramid and related series, he explores the interplay between urban architectural forms and deeper cultural meanings — how pre-Hispanic references and geometric language echo through contemporary urban spaces, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously.

These images ask questions: What do these shapes mean today? How does ancient heritage live in modern facades and built environments? Are we reshaping land, or are landscapes reshaping us?

This kind of work doesn’t just document space. It asks us to see the layers of time embedded in the spaces we occupy.

Pablo López Luz’s work isn’t just recognized in Mexico — it’s seen around the world. He’s had solo exhibitions at places like the Museo Experimental El Eco and the Museo del Chopo in Mexico City, and been included in group shows at the International Center of Photography in New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among many others.

His images are part of prestigious collections like SFMOMA, the National Gallery of Canada, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, LACMA, and the Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC).

His awards and nominations speak to the international impact of his work.

Part of López Luz’s contribution lies in what he asks of his viewer:
Not simply to see, but to interpret.
To recognize that landscapes are not neutral backdrops — they are active participants in our histories and identities.

His work bridges classical notions of landscape — rooted in painting and art history — with contemporary visual language. This has helped place Latin American photography squarely within global conversations about land, identity, and space.

In other words — he didn’t just make photographs. He redefined how photographers engage with space and time.

As we step into a new year, if Sombra Y Cultura has meant something to you — if these episodes have opened a door in your mind or brought you closer to understanding another way of seeing — there’s a small donation link here.

There’s absolutely no pressure. It’s simply a gentle way to help this project continue, and to support deep, meaningful conversations about photographers and their work.

My Final Thoughts

Pablo López Luz reminds us that photography doesn’t always begin at eye level. Sometimes it begins above, or from an unexpected angle, or in silence.

He teaches us that landscapes — like people — carry stories within them. Stories of who we were, who we are, and who we might become.

As you go about your day — walking the streets, looking at a skyline from a bus, or staring at your own city from a distant hill — remember this: space is never empty. It’s layered, lived, shaped by decisions made long before we were born, and by choices we make today.

López Luz’s work invites us to look again — not just at what’s in front of us, but at what it means.

Thank you so much for listening to this first episode of the year. If this story stayed with you, leaving a rating or review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts not only helps this podcast reach more listeners, it helps others find these perspectives too.

Whether you’ve been with Sombra Y Cultura from the beginning or are just joining us now —I’m deeply grateful.

Here’s to a year of curiosity, connection, and vision. Thank you for listening, for engaging, and for looking at the world with care.