Leo Matiz Born in 1917 in Aracataca (Colombia), a city that also gave birth to Gabriel Garcìa Màrquez.

In the early 1930s he created caricatures for the magazine Civilizaciòn and founded a magazine called Lauros.
In 1935 he traveled to Bogotà and studied at the National School of Fine Arts in the city.

In 1937 Enrique Santos (“Calibàn”), publisher of El Tiempo, convinced him to work for him and gave him a camera. In this same period, Matiz studied and worked in the studio of Luis B. Ramos who was known as the father of modern Colombian photography.

In 1939 he began his first journey through Colombia as a documentary photographer and worked as a photojournalist for El Tiempo, El Espectador and La Estampa.

In 1941 he moved to Mexico City and the following year he managed to sneak into the Mazatlàn prison, making an extraordinary report on the conditions in prison that earned him international success.

At the same time he joined Manuel Alvarez Bravo and collaborated with him on several film projects.

In 1947 he worked with David Alfaro Siqueiros on the mural “Cuauhtemoc against the Myth”.

In the same year he took part in a photographic exhibition at the M.o.M.A. of New York and his images are also published in various magazines.

Before the end of 1949, Leo Matiz is universally recognized as one of the top ten living photographers in the world.

His images have been exhibited all over the world.

In the 90s several volumes were published dedicated to his work, in Italy and in France.