Joaquín Palting is an artist, educator, and post-photography specialist working at the intersection of photography, AI, visual culture, and the future of image making. His practice is shaped by an early life spent between art and science. His mother was a landscape photographer and photography professor, and his father was a Chemistry professor and theorist whose research was grounded in quantum mechanics. That proximity to both image making and abstract thought continues to inform the way Palting approaches photography as a form of inquiry.

Palting’s first experiences with photography came from assisting his mother in the field, where he developed a lasting relationship with landscape, observation, and the photographic process. Her own photographic education, which included studying with Jerry Uelsmann and Brett Weston, forms part of a photographic lineage that remains visible in Palting’s attention to perception, abstraction, and the interior life of place.

Before turning fully toward the arts and higher education, Palting built a successful commercial photography career, working between Los Angeles and New York for major editorial and advertising clients including The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, The New York Times, Nike, Nordstrom, Foot Locker, Virgin, Warner Bros. Records, and Sony.

In 2015, he shifted his focus toward a research-driven art practice rooted in photography, video, writing, and expanded image forms. His work now examines the evolving status and definition of the photographic image, with recent projects engaging post-photography, machine-mediated imagery, memory, and the philosophical questions raised by synthetic image making.

Palting’s work has been exhibited internationally and featured by contemporary photography platforms including Aperture, Der Greif, Float Photo Magazine, Landscape Stories, LensCulture, Lenscratch, and Urbanautica.

Alongside his studio practice, Palting is a dedicated educator with experience teaching at universities, museums, and community-based programs. He has taught at San Diego State University, the University of California, Irvine, Medium Photo, the Los Angeles Center of Photography, and the Laguna Art Museum.

Palting is currently a Lecturer of Art at San Diego State University. He holds an MFA in Studio Art from the University of California, Irvine.

You can follow Joaquín on Instagram @joaquinpalting For commissions, assignments, print sales, photography, or art instruction, please email jpalting@gmail.com