Bittar, Carlos

In high school, he discovered with Paul Griffin, his photography teacher at the American College, that taking photos was a fascinating activity, while doing the photos for the 1979 yearbook. During his years in Architecture school, Bittar continued to experiment with the camera. In 1988, he held his first solo photo exhibition: Urban Fragments at the Paraguayan-American Cultural Center, under the initiative of photographer Jesús Ruiz Nestosa. Since then, he has not stopped exhibiting his works, both in Paraguay and abroad. Notable exhibitions abroad include: The Steam Train at the photo gallery of the San Martín Municipal Theater in Buenos Aires (1992), Paraguayan Photography in Dachau, Germany (1998), the 2nd International Photography Biennial in Curitiba, Brazil (1998), and the Third Month of Latin American Photography, at the Dardo Rocha Cultural Center in La Plata, Argentina (2000). His latest exhibitions in the country were Humidus at La Plazita (2003) and XKSA at the ICPA Goethe Zentrum (2005). In 1993 and 1994, he studied documentary photography and photojournalism at the International Center of Photography (New York). Upon his return, he worked as a photojournalist for numerous press outlets for several years, such as the newspaper ABC Color and the magazine TeVeO. In 2001, he won the third prize in the Faro Mecenazgo para las Artes competition, which allowed him to publish Fin de Zona Urbana, a book of urban images of Paraguay at the end and beginning of the century. The following year, 2002, he also published, after years of work, ÚLTIMA ESTACIÓN, a book documenting the steam train in Paraguay during what would be its last years of operation, from 1989 to 1991. Currently, Bittar works freelance in his studio, fotoestudio792, and continues to prepare photographic essays for an upcoming publication.