Milagros de la Torre is a New York-based artist whose work explores the connections between image-language and the notions of racial identity, violence, surveillance, censorship through an autobiographical lens. She has studied Communications Sciences at the University of Lima as well as received a B.A. (Hons) in Photographic Arts from the University of the Arts London. Her first solo exhibition Under the Black Sun (1993), curated by Robert Delpire, was presented at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris and in 1995, she worked as a curatorial assistant in the Photography Department at the Musée Carnavalet, Paris.

She received the Rockefeller Foundation Artist Grant and was awarded the Romeo Martinez Photography Prize and the Young Ibero-American Creators Prize for her series The Lost Steps (1998).

De la Torre was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship (2011), The Dora Maar Fellowship (2014), The Peter S. Reed Foundation Award in Photography (2016) and was the recipient of a Merited Person of Culture medal from the Ministry of Culture in Peru (2016), the Sustainable Arts Foundation Residency Grant (2020), and the Smithsonian Artist Fellowship Award (2021). 

De la Torre is currently a co-Chair for the Photography Department at the Bard College MFA program and serves at the Board of the Penumbra Foundation, NY, a non-profit organization that brings together the Art and Science of Photography through education, research, public and residency programs.

Her work has been exhibited broadly and is part of permanent museum collections including: The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois;  The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Blanton Museum of Art, Austin; Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge; Princeton University Art Museum, New Jersey; Yale University, New Haven; MIT List Visual Arts Center, Boston; El Museo del Barrio, New York; The RISD Museum, Providence; Ruby City, The Linda Pace Foundation, Texas; Diane and Bruce Halle Collection, Phoenix; Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts; Molaa Museum of Latin American Art, California; Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, Paris; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Essex Collection of Art from Latin America, U.K.; Universidad de Salamanca, Spain; Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico; Museo de Arte de Lima, MALI, Peru; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Argentina; MALBA Museum, Argentina.

De la Torre's work has been reviewed by Art in America, The New Yorker, ARTFORUM, Frieze Magazine, ARTnews, Wall St. Journal, The New York Times, The Guardian, TIME Magazine, Public Radio International, Broadly, Beaux Arts Magazine, Jeu de Paume Magazine, EXIT Magazine, ArtNexus, Arte al Día, Atlantica Journal.