Genesis, the new book by Juan Brenner, explores the people and culture of the Guatemalan Highlands. Genesis is the culmination of over five years' work, in which Brenner documented the Highland area and people of his home country. With a focus on youth culture in the region, Brenner captures a new generation of Guatemalans, the first to establish an intelligible dialogue with their contemporaries around the world. Genesis is an extensive study of Highland society, exploring the history, nuance, and complexity of everyday life, with photography that captures a territory that is in the midst of great change and a set intention to document the “process of becoming". Genesis will be exhibited at Aurora PhotoCenter in June-August 2025.

Juan Brenner, a self-taught photographer, lives and works in Guatemala City. After working in New York as a fashion photographer for over a decade, Brenner returned to his native Guatemala where he began making work about the people and complex territory in the country’s Western Highlands. Juan uses photography to reflect on the fluidity and abstract nature of identity and territory; his images capture the complexities of cultural hybridization and, more poignantly, the way power, hierarchical structures and inequality are instrumentally continued through time. Brenner’s first monograph, Tonatiuh, was shortlisted for the 2019 Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation First PhotoBook Award. For the same project, he was a winner of LensCulture’s 2019 Emerging Talent Award. His works have been featured in publications including Aperture, British Journal of Photography, Le Monde, VICE, C-41, Aint Bad, Fisheye, Booooooom, California Sunday Magazine, Paper Journal, Collector Daily, I-D Magazine, Dazed and Confused, Pardo, Loupe, Palm Studios, Metal Magazine, Musee, JOIA and Balam Magazine. He is a founding member of Proyectos Ultravioleta in Guatemala City.