Antonio Martinez

Antonio Jacob Martinez (b. 1979 – present) is a visual artist and educator who was born in California, raised in Oklahoma, and earned professional art degrees in Nebraska and North Carolina. Since 2005, Martinez has been instructing a variety of photography and digital arts-related courses at Southern Illinois University. Martinez is known for his process-based experimental photographic work that combines alternative darkroom-based techniques and materials with digital tools and methods of production. The underlying themes in most of his work blends moments of sorrow and wonder with a side of entropy and vulnerability. This is evidenced in Near the Egress (about a modern circus), How to Hug and Other Sublimations of Men (about amateur cagefighters), Skeletons + Heavens (about ecological loss), Acorazar y Amor (about pandemic fatigue), and Anonymous (a long term series about sperm/egg donors and donor-conceived children). Martinez’s work has been exhibited at notable venues such as Blue Sky Gallery, KlompChing Gallery, Gallery 1 of 1, and The Light Factory; and collected at Portland Museum, LeHigh University Museum, and Freeport Art Museum; and published in arts magazines such as PetaPixel, PDN, Hand, and Diffusion magazine.