Xavo Buendia is a photographer and creative director. He was born in Mexico City and grew up between Mexico City and Barcelona. He now lives in Brighton, UK.
He spent about ten years in hospitality and wine before he turned to photography. At 30 he enrolled at university to study professional photography. During the pandemic he earned an MA in documentary photography.
He works in portraiture, documentary, food and architecture photography. He also works in creative direction and video. His clients include Thames & Hudson, Penguin Random House, Hilton and The Observer. His photographs have also been published in The New York Times and The Guardian.
He has shown work at Photo Oxford Festival in 2014, Photo España in 2023 and Brighton Photo Fringe in 2024.
Since October 2022 he has written the newsletter Xavografica on Substack. It has photo essays and notes on his creative process. He also offers mentoring and workshops.
His book Book One: Broken Edges has 48 pages and no text. It comes from photographs he made while documenting a restaurant in the UK between 2014 and 2019. He turned all but two of the photographs into black and white. The color red matters in the two color photographs. He edited the book with Tomasz Laczny in a workshop in London. Its launch is set for 5 December 2026 at the Book & Zine Fair in Brighton.
