Rodrigo Moya

Luis Rodrigo Moya Moreno (; April 10, 1934 – July 30, 2025), known as Rodrigo Moya, was a Mexican photojournalist, writer and publisher who is best known for his photographic work from 1955 to 1968. Moya began his photojournalism career after apprenticing with Colombian photojournalist Guillermo Angulo, taking over Angulo's job when he went to Italy to study cinema. For the next thirteen years, Moya worked for various news magazines covering stories in Mexico and Latin America, especially social and political upheavals such as guerrilla fighters in Venezuela and Guatemala. He also went in 1964 to Cuba to document the revolution there, and took a series of portraits of Che Guevara, including El Che melancólico (Melancholy Che), one of two iconic images of Guevara. In 1968, Moya decided he could no longer make a living in photography and worked until the end of the decade as a magazine publisher and short story writer, leaving a large archive packed away. In the very late 1990s, a long illness forced him to move to open and reevaluate this archive and he subsequently worked to promote those images.

Background Rodrigo Moya was born in Medellín, Colombia, in 1934 to a Colombian mother and Mexican father. Over his lifetime, he was a scuba diver, writer, traveler, editor, photographer and leftist activist. Moya's father was a set designer with the Mexican theater company Hermanos Soler, when he went on tour with a production to Colombia. There he met Moya's mother, who married him when she was no older than 17.

At age twenty, he no longer lived with his parents and needed some way to earn a living. Some friends of his family wanted to start a television station in Colombia and they paid for him to attend an intensive course in television production and direction. When he was doing his first work in this field he met a Colombian photographer, Guillermo Angulo. When Angulo asked Moya about aspects of television cameras, Moya responded that he would teach him what he knew but in return Angulo needed to teach him about photography, especially the development process.

At age 70, Moya suffered a long illness, which prompted him and his wife Susan Flaherty to move out of Mexico City into Cuernavaca, where he remained until his death.

Photojournalism career 1955 to 1967 Angulo was chief photographer for Impacto magazine, and as his assistant, Moya did assignments that Angulo did not want. In 1955 Angulo went to Italy to study at Cine Cittá and Moya took over for him. This job lasted for about four years, until Moya decided to go freelance, working as a photojournalist and taking photographs related to the theater.

This career took Moya all over Mexico and to countries such as Panama, Ecuador, Haiti, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala and Venezuela.

He covered political unrest throughout Latin America in the 1950s and 1960s, During all of this time, Moya continued to develop his photography skills on his own. He said he was surprised at what sold, When in Cuba, he took a series of photographs of Che Guevara. Rodrigo Moya, De lo que pudo haber sido y no fue. Cuentos neorrománticos, Instituto Cubano del Libro, Havana, 1996. Rodrigo Moya, Cuentos para leer junto al mar, Tusquets, México, 1997. Fuera de Moda, Fotoseptiembre. Xalapa, 2002 Alfonso Morales y Juan Manuel Aurrecoechea, Rodrigo Moya. Foto insurrecta, Ediciones El Milagro, México, 2004. Alberto del Castillo Troncoso, Rodrigo Moya, una visión crítica de la modernidad, CNCA, México, 2006. Cuba Mía, Ensayo de Claudi Carreras, Casa Amèrica Catalunya, Barcelona, 2009. Alberto del Castillo Troncoso, Rodrigo Moya. Una mirada documental, Ediciones El Milagro - IIE-UNAM - La Jornada, 2011. Rodrigo Moya. El telescopio interior, Edition by Patricia Gola and Alejandra Pérez Zamudio, Centro de la Imagen CNCA, México, 2014. Rodrigo Moya. Photography and Conscience / Fotografía y conciencia, Essay by Ariel Arnal. Wittliff Collection - Texas State University en San Marcos, 2015.

Exhibitions Lágrimas y risas de México Exposición colectiva en el Centro deportivo Israelita (1958) Colectiva Primer Salón Latinoamericano de Fotografía (1959) Fuera de Moda en el marco de Fotoseptiembre en la ciudad de Xalapa (2002) Exposición individual y homenaje Foto Insurrecta (2004)- Exposición en el Centro de la Imagen, Ciudad de México Testigos de la Historia (2005) - Exposición colectiva El Trenecito (2006) - Exposición en la Galería López Quiroga, Ciudad de México. La Eterna Infancia (2007) - Exposición en la sala central de la Alhóndiga de Granaditas, Guanajuato. Cuba Mía (2009)- Exposición en la Casa Amèrica Catalunya, Barcelona. Cuba Mía (2009)- Exposición en el Palacio de Bellas Artes, Havana, Cuba La muerte de Goitia- (2010) Exposición en la Fototeca de Zacatecas Ojos Bien Abiertos / Eyes Wide Open (2010) - Exposición en Etherton Gallery, Tucson, Arizona. Fotografía y consciencia (2015)- Exposición en Wittliff Collection de la Texas State University en San Marcos, Texas. Cuba 1964: la Revolución en marcha (2017)- Exposición en la Alhóndiga de Granaditas, en el marco del Festival Internacional Cervantino, Guanajuato. Cuba 1964: la Revolución en marcha (2018)- Exposición en el Museo de Historia de Tlalpan, Ciudad de México. Cuba 1964: la Revolución en marcha (2019)- Exposición en el Museo de León Trotsky, Ciudad de México. Rodrigo Moya. México (2019)- Exposición en el Museo Amparo, Puebla.