Ospina, Viki

Viki Ospina, pseudonym of María Victoria Villalba Stewart (Barranquilla 1948), is a Colombian photographer, professional journalist, and one of the country's first photojournalists. She has participated in important Colombian film productions and is renowned for her photographic essays on popular culture in Colombia and the Barranquilla Carnival. In 1970, she ventured into photography with outdoor studies of young people, children, and families in Bogotá. In 1973, she joined the Colombian newspaper El Periódico, directed by Consuelo de Montejo, where she published the photo report "Más vale una palma africana que la vida de un trabajador colombiano" ("An African Palm is Worth More Than the Life of a Colombian Worker"). In 1975, she began working at the magazine Cromos, where she published the photo "La Gallada" or "Los Gamines," which was used as the cover for the French writer Jacques Meunier's book "Les gamins de Bogota" (1977). This photograph is part of the Art Collection of the Banco de la República de Bogotá and was included in the exhibition Urbes Mutantes. During the 1970s, she was the official photographer for Colombian President Alfonso López Michelsen while also being affiliated with the left-wing Movimiento Obrero Independiente Revolucionario (MOIR). She is one of the first photojournalists in the country and covered the siege of the Palace of Justice in Bogotá for the Reuters International News Agency in 1985. Her work has always focused on popular culture and identity, motivating her to develop series and sequences. Her photographic essay "Miradas en el cruce de los tiempos" ("Gazes at the Crossroads of Time") about the Barranquilla Carnival was exhibited at the Grande Halle de la Villette Gallery in Paris. Between 1994 and 2002, she exhibited the project "Arte fotográfico para un espacio de mucho público" ("Photographic Art for a High Traffic Space") in the national and international terminal galleries at El Dorado Airport in Bogotá, reflecting on the human condition through photographs. She has also worked on still photography for short films, feature films, and TV series: Cuartico Azul, María Cano (1990), Tiempo para Amar, Crónicas de una generación trágica (1993), among others. She currently works in the Art Department at the Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, where she has been a lecturer since 2004.