José Cordero began seeing the world through a camera lens in the mid-1980s. At age 20, he bought a Nikon F3, his first foray into 35 mm photography. It was love at first sight, a passion he shared with his drama classes at Cristina Rota’s school. But photography won out. Working at the “Daylight” studios in Madrid, he honed his lighting technique and gained experience in the worlds of fashion and advertising.

He worked as a set assistant with a wide variety of fashion and advertising photographers, including Pepe Botella, Alejandro Cabrera, and Michael Wright, among others. There, he met Paco Navarro, a renowned fashion photographer, with whom he worked for five years. Working alongside Navarro, he grew professionally and discovered the work of those who would become his role models: Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Herb Ritts, and Bruce Weber.

In 1995, he began his solo career as a professional photographer. The great Spanish models of the 1990s—Nieves Álvarez, Martina Klein, Judit Mascó, and Esther Cañadas—all posed for his Hasselblad camera early in their careers. His fashion shoots and portraits of celebrities from the worlds of sports, music, and film have been published in Elle, Rolling Stone, La Mirada, Downtown, AR, and Ragazza, among others. All of his work is characterized by his unique approach to lighting.

He currently lives and works on the Costa del Sol—in Marbella, Málaga