Julio Mitchel was born and raised in Cuba. He moved to New York City at seventeen, and the city has remained his home. As a young artist he studied photography with Lisette Model. His work has taken him across the Americas, Europe and the Middle East. His books include Triptych (Parkett, 1990) and Do You Love Me? (IVAM, 1991).
His book El Sur (GOST Books, 2026) brings together photographs he made on many trips to Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador and Perú, from the 1980s to 2000. It is two books in one: Journey, in black and white, and Portraits, in colour. He left out individual captions, because his main focus is on the causes behind the violence: poverty, corruption, and race and class inequality.
His photographs are held in collections including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. He has twice received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. He taught photography at the Cooper Union, the School of Visual Arts and the New School, and is now retired from teaching.
