renee torres

Artist Statement

Renee Torres is a visual artist, designer, and photographer raised between two of California's most distinct landscapes — the Mojave Desert and the Bay Area — an upbringing that shaped her enduring fascination with the state's wild and overlooked terrain, discovered on weekend exploration road trips.

She began her studies in fine arts and photography at junior college before going on to study Menswear Design at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. In 2012, she moved to New York, where she worked with brands including Dover Street Market and Acne Studios. That grounding in design and craft now informs her work as founder and photographer of Mojave Art, where she creates large-scale fine-art prints from panoramic 35mm film — shot exclusively on the Horizon Perfekt, a rare rotating-lens camera capable of an immersive, meditative perspective unique to analog photography.

For the past decade, Torres has photographed wild California — the Mojave Desert, remote coastlines, and untouched landscapes — producing prints up to 108 inches wide that reveal the full organic character of film: its grain, tonal depth, and subtle imperfections of light. These qualities are not digital effects but the honest signature of analog process, and at scale they become something felt as much as seen.

Her current project is a poster series called MIRACLE OF LOVE— born from Torres's collection of 1970s subculture ephemera — hippie commune manuals, new age spiritual texts, and the desire for world peace.