Mario Algaze was born in Havana, Cuba in 1947. At the age of thirteen he was forced to exile Cuba in 1960 and relocated to Miami, Florida. There he found a vibrant, melting pot of culture, which encouraged him to travel to Central and South America where he worked as a freelance photojournalist for national and international publications.. In the 1970's he studied visual art at Miami Dade College and went on to become one of the world's foremost contemporary Latin American documentary photographers. He has received numerous awards and wide recognition for his photographic eye and printing skill. Much of Algaze's work deals with retracing his own roots and culminates into an expertly crafted composition of light, time and space.
"Mario Algaze's photographs are imbued with a haunting, lyrical quality that causes them to flicker in the mind like candles in the night long after the earth has been enveloped in darkness" - Collette Chattopadhyay, Art Nexus (2004)