Marco Antonio Bell

Photographer & Visual Artist

Miami-Caracas

Marco Bell (USA–Venezuela, b. 1983) is a photographer and visual artist whose practice integrates documentary approaches, performance, and conceptual research to explore the visual codes that shape identity, ideology, and belonging. His work reflects on the tensions between memory and collective myth, addressing themes of transculturation, nationalism, and power. Bell holds an MFA in Photography from Parsons School of Design, The New School (New York, 2015). His projects move between visual anthropology and contemporary art, including *Bolívar, New York*—a social performance in a declining oil town—and *Dress Code (Uniformes Nacionales)*, a typological study on identity. He is currently developing a documentary series about cowboy culture in the southern United States, expanding his research on migration, representation, and the invisibility of labor. His work has been exhibited internationally and is represented by TOBE Gallery (Budapest). Bell lives in Florida, where he teaches photography and maintains a commercial practice in architectural and editorial photography.

Artworks (8)

My work explores how identity is constructed, projected, and at times fictionalized through clothing and the symbols of power. In “Typologies (Dress Code)”, I examine the aesthetics of appearance and the social aspirations embedded in costumes and everyday uniforms during a turbulent period in Venezuela, while “Bolivar, New York” investigates the traces of extractivism in a declining pioneer oil town in the United States that, in an oddly resonant coincidence, happens to bear the name of Simón Bolívar. Both series engage in a dialogue about belonging, representation, and the tensions between myth and reality in the construction of a national image.