About me

I was born in a small town in Argentina, and studied Electrical Engineering at the University of Buenos Aires.

In 1996 I moved to California to pursue a career in computer graphics and special effects. I have credits on films like Brave, Toy Story 3, Wall-E, Ratatouille, Madagascar, Shrek, Shrek 2, Antz and Space Jam.

In the meantime, I started doing street photography. I had several shows in the Bay Area, and was accepted to Barnstorm XX, the Eddie Adams Workshop, in 2007. My photoblog, "Water Molotov", has been online since early 2005, and I post a new photo there every day.

Between 2012 and 2014 I drove an 1989 VW van from California to Tierra del Fuego.

When I came back, I sort of changed careers, and ended up working for about ten years at a couple of startups. I taught myself data science, machine learning, dataset understanding. It's the same brain areas that you use for graphics so it was a natural transition.

In 2024, I returned to the animation and visual effects industry. I work as a Principal Engineer at Sony Pictures Animation and Sony Pictures Imageworks. I had forgotten how much I love being part of a group making movies.

Contact me at juanbuhler at gmail.

Shows

• 2002 -- Street Photographs. Pierotti Pavilion Gallery, San Francisco. (solo)

• 2003 -- Street Photography by Juan Buhler, Anja Ditsmarch Gallery, San Francisco. (solo)

• 2003 -- Pont des Arts. Cafe, San Francisco. (solo)

• 2004 -- Farewell. Private show with David Hart.

• 2006 -- Street, Anja Ditsmarch Gallery, San Francisco. (solo)

• 2007 -- Gente de mi Ciudad. Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires. (solo)

• 2009 -- Street Photos. Pierotti Pavilion Gallery, San Francisco. (solo)

• 2011 -- Street Posters. Public Works Gallery, San Francisco. (solo)

• 2011 -- En Vía Pública. The Private Space Gallery, Barcelona. (with Calle 35)

• 2011 -- Calle 35, at Visa Off, Perpignan, France. (with Calle 35)

• 2012 -- La calle es nuestra, VII Biennal de Fotografía Xavier Miserachs, Palafrugell. (with Calle 35)

• 2013 -- Miami Street Photography Festival. (with Calle 35)

Collectives

• Public Life -- http://www.public-life.org

• Calle 35 -- http://www.calle35.com

About this site

This website is a static archive generated by a custom Python engine ("Static Photo Site"). I "vibed" this in one weekend using Gemini 3.

Unlike modern social media or dynamic platforms like WordPress, this site has no database, no tracking scripts, and no server-side processing. It is simply a collection of HTML files and images, designed to last for decades with zero maintenance.

However, it is not "dumb." I use local AI (OpenAI's CLIP model) to analyze the visual content of my 20-year archive. This allows the site to automatically suggest visually similar photos, categorize images by content, and generate detailed statistics about my photography habits.

• Visual Universe: Explore the entire archive sorted by visual similarity.

• Site Statistics: View posting timelines, location maps, and tag clouds.