Rubén Salgado Escudero was born in Madrid, Spain. He lived in the United States throughout his teenage years, graduating from the Savannah College of Art and Design. In 2014 he decided to change his life completely, leaving behind a ten-year long career in character animation in Germany. Instead he leaves for Myanmar to pursue his passion for photography and document the opening of a country that had been closed to the world for more than half a century. Today he is based in Mexico.
Rubén's works have been exhibited in dozens of cities worldwide including New York, London, Tokyo and at the Les Rencontres d'Arles photo festival in France. He is a member of The Photo Society, a community of National Geographic Magazine photographers.
His projects have been published in most major international publications and has won over twenty international awards including the Sony World Photography Award two years in a row, and the POY Latam (Picture of the Year) also two times. He is also a National Geographic Explorer since 2018. His ongoing long-term project Solar Portraits, is now part of National Geographic’s official traveling exhibitions catalog since 2021.