Mariano E. Rodríguez
Mariano E. Rodríguez is a professional photographer, filmmaker, writer, theater director, self-taught painter, and holds a degree in Philosophy. He was born in Paraná, Entre Ríos, Argentina, in 1983.
In 1997, he began his training at the Asociación de Fotógrafos Profesionales de Entre Ríos (AFPER), where he obtained the title of Professional Photographer. He later continued his development at Una Foto Escuela, specializing in artistic and advertising photography, as well as historical photographic processes such as Gum Bichromate, Van Dyke Brown, and pinhole photography, the preparation of photographic emulsions, manual developing and printing on black-and-white and color paper, the chemical composition of photographic films and papers, and the Zone System under the theory of Ansel Adams.
He subsequently moved to Buenos Aires, where he began working at the fashion and advertising studio “Dress & Body,” under the direction of photographer Fernando Lipina. During his time in the capital, he deepened his studies in Image and Color Theory at the Escuela Argentina de Fotografía, obtaining the degree of Higher Technical Specialist in Photography and Image. In the following years, he studied Film Directing at the Instituto de Cine y Artes Audiovisuales in the city of Santa Fe, training he complemented with Theater Directing at the Instituto “Prof. Colegio Constancio Carminio” in Paraná, Entre Ríos.
Throughout his career, Mariano has participated in individual and collective photographic exhibitions in Chile, Cuba, Spain, Paris, and Argentina. In 2010, he presented the series THE REHEARSAL – The Intimate Side of Ballet, inspired by Edgar Degas’ The Ballet Class, at the Centro Cultural Juan L. Ortiz in Paraná, Entre Ríos. The photographs were taken of students from the Municipal Ballet of the Teatro 3 de Febrero, directed by Alexia Loskin. The exhibition was presented in audiovisual format and accompanied by a live performance by the ballet company. The exhibition was declared of Cultural Interest by the Honorable Concejo Deliberante of Paraná (Presidential Decree No. 188).
He designed and produced the digital art and culture magazine Bello & Sublime Magazine as a platform to promote the work of artists from Paraná, Entre Ríos, including graphic designers Juan Barbagelata, Fabia Estamatti, and Natalia Hallam, the painter Javier Solari, and the writer María Elena Barbieri.
A significant portion of his work was acquired by national and international collectors. His photographic work is part of the Centro de Imagen Aella in Paris, the Fototeca Iberoamericana de Cuba in Havana, and the Centro de Imagen: Los Lavaderos in Tenerife, Spain. His productions have illustrated catalogs and specialized publications, including the book NUDES AROUND THE WORLD, edited by Peter Delius and Jacek Slaski and published by Bruckmann Verlag in Munich. He participated in workshops for artists and art educators led by renowned photographer Elda Harrington, organized by the Consejo Federal de Inversiones. In parallel, he produced experimental short films and worked as a director of photography on various film productions.
Spanish critic Javier Cabrera wrote about his work:
“The Argentine Mariano Rodríguez constructs convergent gazes centered on portraiture with a subtlety that invites contemplation of different distances within a single motif. In his work, subjects invade the lens to assert their singularity. ‘Illuminated’ characters occupy the focal point and seem to say: ‘because I distinguish myself from the rest, I belong to my tribe, because I am…’.”
In 2014, he decided to completely abandon photographic and audiovisual production to fully dedicate himself to Philosophy, a discipline in which he obtained his degree. In this field, he published a series of philosophical essays, including A SAVAGE GOD: Essay on the Origin of Monotheism and Polytheism in the Religions of History, THE ETHICS OF EVIL: Considerations on the Problem of Evil in Spinoza and Its Impact on Modernity, THE TRAP OF REASON: Nietzsche’s Critique of Socratic Morality, THE MISFORTUNE OF MEMORY: The Importance of Forgetting in the Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, THE COSMETICS OF EVIL: The Aesthetic Conception of Evil in Augustine of Hippo, THE LIMITS OF AUGUSTINE IN THE WORLD OF WITTGENSTEIN: Wittgenstein’s Critique of Augustine of Hippo’s Theory of Language Acquisition, AUREA MEDIOCRITAS: The Influence of Greek Rhetoric on Modern Discourse, THE NEUROBIOLOGICAL IMPOSSIBILITY OF PHENOMENOLOGY, THE MYTH OF REASON, ADMINISTERED FREEDOM, and TIME WITHOUT A CLOCK.
He participated in seminars on Religious and Philosophical Conflicts in Late Antiquity, taught by Dr. Juan Carlos Alby, Diego Santos, and Pablo Ubierna (RES. CD. No. 1539/2017). He lectured at the conference Epistemology and Metaphor, declared of Academic Interest and coordinated by Dr. Esther Díaz. He was also a speaker at the English literature event “Shakespeare Fundamental,” organized within the framework of SEU and Human Rights, where he presented a translation and study of the poem Paracelsus by Robert Browning, originally published in 1835.
In the theatrical field, he wrote and directed: THE IDEAL OF THE ADVERSARY and THE IMMORAL MAN, the latter presented at the independent theater La Sonrisa de Beckett during the autumn of 2010 in the city of Rosario.
In 2025, he published WILL-O’-THE-WISP, an epistolary short story of intense philosophical and poetic density whose epilogue connects the narrative with the theatrical work THE IMMORAL MAN, an adaptation that—according to the author himself—allowed him to transfer the essence of the original story to the stage. Shortly thereafter, he presented LITURGY OF THE CONDEMNED, a dramatic work that completes the trilogy THE DEATH OF THE MUSES, together with The Ideal of the Adversary and The Immoral Man. In this piece, he develops an existential duel between the archetypal figures Azrion and Edranea, whose intertwined voices generate a space of mystical, erotic, and philosophical tension. To facilitate its reading, the work was adapted to be narrated by theater director Eleonora Moreau.
In 2007, the publishing house ELALEPH S.R.L. released THE CURVE OF THE THIGH, his first book of poetry, later reissued in 2019. This new edition preserves the poetic intensity of the original work, incorporating subtle stylistic refinements that enrich its reading. The text was carefully revised with special attention to linguistic harmony, expressive clarity, and the musicality of the imagery, while the editorial design was updated to offer a more refined, sober, and elegant edition. A renewed classic that accentuates the beauty of the minimal, the fleeting, and the hidden. In 2025, he returned to poetry and published his second book, I SWEAR TO DRAG HER ACROSS THE SEAS. Here, Rodríguez distances himself from the predominant female figure in his earlier work to explore themes related to fragility, the passage of time, and the search for meaning in a world traversed by the ephemeral, combining an intense lyrical voice with a tension close to the theatrical.
In the same year, he published the short story ANHEDONIA, with an English version. A narrative that simultaneously functions as a philosophical treatise, a hermetic grimoire, and a cartography of the inner abyss. The following year, he published the book FRACTURED REASON: Emotions as the Epistemological Boundary of Reason. In this essay, he proposes an inquiry that exceeds traditional disciplinary limits to address one of the central problems of Western philosophy: the relationship between mind and body, reason and emotion, consciousness and materiality. The book stands out for its rigorous conceptual architecture and its ability to establish a dialogue between seventeenth-century rationalism and recent findings in cognitive neuroscience. From this interdisciplinary perspective, he argues that emotions do not simply constitute an obstacle to reason, but rather an epistemological boundary from which rational activity is configured and redefined.
After several years of exploring different artistic languages, Mariano returned to painting, as one returns to an intimate territory long postponed. In 2025, he transferred his drawings onto canvas, generating a more visceral and material interpretation of those unsettling and dehumanized universes. What once remained contained in drawing now unfolds in an almost three-dimensional space. This transition from drawing to painting also symbolizes an expansion of the human psyche, a more direct exploration of dark emotions and thoughts. In this cycle, Rodríguez deepens his reflection on the fragmentation of identity. The faces of his figures, disfigured and deprived of harmony, evoke the experience of a subject incapable of recognizing himself in the mirror. The pictorial texture becomes tangible, like a persistent mark on the canvas. This series was published in 2025 under the title THE THRESHOLD OF FORM, a catalog-book accompanied by a critical essay on his vision of contemporary art.
At present, Mariano Rodríguez has not returned to producing photographic or audiovisual material. In an interview granted to IMMAGO MAGAZINE, the author stated that he had destroyed the entirety of his work, including prints, negatives, and digital archives. The images included in the PHOTOGRAPHY section were recovered from various platforms that still preserve fragments of his work. He also decided to distance himself from the art circuit, arguing that contemporary art has acquired an absurd character, defined by the degree of discomfort it is capable of provoking in the viewer.
The trajectory of Mariano E. Rodríguez is characterized by a constant movement between disciplines—a search that recognizes no boundaries and has led him to traverse photography, cinema, theater, writing, and philosophy with equal intensity. His work—marked by a persistent critical inquietude and a gesture of rupture—oscillates between the ephemeral and the enduring, between intimacy and the creative act. Currently, his production stands as testimony to a sensibility that does not limit itself to repeating inherited languages, but seeks to transform, confront, and resignify them. Thus, Mariano emerges not only as a restless creator, but as a persistent explorer of those territories where art, philosophy, and life intertwine.
Currently, Mariano Rodríguez is VP Manager at “Enter To My World,” a company based in London, UK, where he leads the development and design of applications. With a background in Philosophy, he has focused his career on the research and publication of essays that explore contemporary issues. Mariano combines his interest in technology with critical thought, allowing him to approach projects from an integrated perspective that unites both fields.
By Alexandra De Luca