
Miriam Alarcón Avila is a photographer, and a visual, multimedia, and storytelling artist. Her mission is to pursue her bliss by creatively producing strong works of art that leave a legacy for a better, sustainable, and inclusive world. She wants to inspire, connect, encourage, educate, support, and help others experience and engage with a borderless world.
Born in Mexico City, Miriam Alarcón Avila became devoted to photography at a very young age. After witnessing the devastating 1985 earthquake that killed thousands of people, walking in the middle of the destroyed city, she experienced a profound urgency to photograph and document both the disaster and the human resilience around her. This experience framed her life and artistic work; understanding that healing and recovery can take place through art and a community support system. At that time, Miriam Alarcón Avila wished to own a camera that would allow her to capture such moments, but that was a luxury her widowed mother couldn’t afford to buy. She then started to store thousands of images into the vault of her memory and has been devoted to visual documentation with a photojournalistic approach ever since.
In 1986, using an old beat-up Fujifilm camera she had picked up in a pawn shop, Miriam Alarcón Avila began experimenting with photography, inspired by the beauty, vivid colors, and abundant textures found in her culture.
When Miriam moved to Iowa in 2002, she began working with digital mediums to document the work of local musicians and photographing worldwide performance artists to embrace and showcase the cultural diversity of the Midwest. Along with her professional work, she also collaborated on photo and video documentation projects for numerous nonprofit arts, cultural, and community organizations. Her photographic work appeared in several local and national newspapers and magazines. In 2012 she began creating public art installations ranging from sand sculptures, pumpkin carvings, and projection mappings to murals.
In 2017, Miriam Alarcón Avila received an Iowa Arts Council grant award to develop “Luchadores Immigrants in Iowa,” a photo-documentary project that gave voice to new Iowans and shared their challenges as immigrants of Latino heritage; which has become one of her long-term projects. The exhibit, “Immigrant Luchadores” appeared at various universities and galleries across Iowa and the Midwest, including the Des Moines Art Center, German American Heritage Center and Museum, Western Illinois University, and University of Iowa, and received regional media attention.