Carlos Javier Ortiz (cjophoto)

Carlos Javier Ortiz Puerto Rican b, 1975 Carlos Javier Ortiz was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico and raised in Chicago, Illinois. As a teenager, his love of photography led him to work at a traveling carnival to save money for photography equipment and college tuition. He studied photojournalism at Columbia College Chicago and became a staff photographer for Chicago In The Year 2000 (CITY 2000), a yearlong project documenting the city and its inhabitants. Since that time, Carlos Javier has focused on documenting society's most vulnerable communities across the United States, Mexico, Guatemala, Israel and West Bank. As a result of his commitment to addressing social problems, Carlos Javier won the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights Photography(2009) award for Too Young To Die, his multiyear, comprehensive examination of youth violence in the United States and Central America. He was also a finalist for the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography (2008). In 2010 Carlos accepted an invitation to become a contributing photographer for “Facing Change: Documenting America,” a non-profit collective of some of the nation’s best photographers and writers covering under-reported aspects of America’s most urgent issues. He has taught graduate photojournalism at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and has been a guest lecturer at numerous other colleges and universities. In 2011, Carlos Javier received the Open Society Institute Audience Engagement Grant for his continuing work on Too Young To Die. Carlos Javier has also received the California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowship for his coverage of youth violence as a public health issue (2012). Other grants and awards include the Driehaus Journalism Fund for Government Accountability and Investigative Reporting (2011) and the Annie E. Casey Foundation Medal for Meritorious Journalism for his collaboration with WBEZ-FM/Chicago Public Radio on Chicago's high school dropout rate (2010). His work is currently in collection at the Museum of Contemporary photography in Chicago. His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world, including Migrant Workers: Leica Gallery Fotokina, Cologne, Germany, CITY 2000 Traveling Group Exhibition: French-American Center for Art, Paris, France , International Photography Festival, Aleppo, Syria , American Cultural Center, Alexandria, Egypt , De Melkweg, Amsterdam, Sao Paulo, Brazil and American Poverty: Group show, Newseum, Washington D.C. USA In addition to his contributions to journalism, Carlos Javier has collaborated with several community organizations, churches, and schools to address youth violence. His work with Urban Dolorosa, a multi-cultural ecumenical approach to youth violence, was heralded as a novel approach to engaging the faith community throughout Chicago. He has also worked with staff and students at Chicago Youth Boxing Club and North Lawndale College Prep High School to use photography to help students deal with youth violence. His community work was recognized in 2009 by Chicago's WGN News in a segment called "Chicago's Very Own, " which highlighted his unique combination of journalism and documentary photography of important social issues. In 2012, he also travelled to the West Bank with the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund (PCRF) to document a joint American-Palestinian humanitarian trip to provide free surgeries to those in dire need of medical attention. Carlos Javier's work has been published in Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Ebony Magazine and in numerous international print, broadcast and online venues.