Luis Alejandro Cuéllar-Varona obtained his bachelor's degree from Colegio Colombo-Frances de Popayán (1994) and then went to the United States as an exchange student in the city of Topeka (Kansas), where he graduated from high school. In 1995 He returned to Colombia to study industrial engineering at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana de Cali where he graduated in 2001. He also studied international relations at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá (2007).

For 12 years he worked in the marketing, sales and human resources areas of companies such as Colgate, Gillete, Quala, Agrícola Himalaya, Thuoper and Spazio W. 

In 2009, he discovered his life’s  passion: photography. He started studying and practicing it in Bogotá during his free time while he was working as a national sales manager for a Colombian company. 

 

In 2012 he decided to make a career shift: he quit his job, sold everything he had and traveled to Paris to pursue his passion and start a new life. He studied at the SPEOS Paris Photographic Institute, where he obtained a diploma as a professional photographer in 2013; and in 2016 he started studying fine arts at the École des Arts de la Sorbonne, where he obtained his BFA  in 2018 and his Masters’ in fine arts on 2021 at the same university.

He works as a professional photographer in Paris mainly in portrait, editorial and commercial assignments. His personal work focuses on the meaning of everyday life, banality and naturalness. He has published photography editorials in several magazines in France, England, America, Brazil, Italy, the United States, the Netherlands and Colombia. He has also held exhibitions in galleries and institutions in the city of Paris