Horacio Villalobos
Horacio Villalobos began his career as a photographer in 1965 at El Dia newspaper in La Plata, Argentina, where he was born in 1946. He studied for a degree in physics, but because of the hostile environment created by the dictatorship after the 1966 coup d’état, he left to pursue a career in photojournalism. In 1972 he moved to Buenos Aires, where, in 1973, he received the first scholarship awarded by the Inter American Press Association to a Latin-American photojournalist to study for a master’s degree in photojournalism at the University of Missouri in USA. He later traveled to Africa to cover the Eritrean war of independence against Ethiopia. He returned to Buenos Aires in 1976 and joined the national newspaper Diario Popular where he later became director of photography. At the same time, he worked as a freelancer, collaborating with the US news agencies United Press International and Associated Press, Time, Business Week and Newsweek magazines, as well as The New York Times.
Some of his most important works include the Chilean coup d’état on September 11, 1973, where he took the last photograph of Salvador Allende alive, waving from the balcony of La Moneda Palace. He covered the Argentine coup d’état in March 1976, obtaining unique images showing the helicopter carrying President Isabel Perón that left the government palace after being arrested during the coup d’état on March 24, 1976. He also covered international events such as World Soccer Cups.
In 2001, Horacio Villalobos moved to Europe, first working for the Corbis agency in Paris, and then taking on senior positions at the EPA – European Pressphoto Agency, in France, the UK, Ireland, Luxembourg and Germany. He has been living in Portugal since 2016 and currently works for Getty Images Agency. Horacio Villalobos has won several international awards and is frequently invited to be a jury member at photojournalism festivals and awards. He is at present member of the governing body of the Association of Foreign Press in Portugal (AIEP).
