Barbara Salinas was born in New York City and grew up in Queens, NY.  She currently resides on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.  She is a first generation American as her entire family is from Mendoza, Argentina.

After graduating from St. John’s University with an A.A. in Liberal Arts in 1992, Salinas found herself in “Corporate America” with a high paying sales job in telecommunications.  Having always considered herself an artist on some level prior to her sales job, she felt lost in this new world.  To help keep her grounded, over the course of a few years, she enrolled in drawing, painting, and sculpting night classes at Hunter College in NYC.

Some years later, she reestablished connection with her brother, who is a professional photographer living in NYC.  He inspired Barbara to find her creative voice through a camera.  With a loaned Pentax K1000 from her brother, she enrolled in photography classes at Hunter College.  She was soon asked to ‘work’ for the Hunter Envoy School Newspaper as a staff photographer.  She was published on the front page on her first shoot.  She immediately quit her corporate job to pursue photography.

With enough work to build her first portfolio, she enrolled in part-time classes at The International Center of Photography. Within a few semesters, she applied and was accepted into the General Studies Full-Time Program.  Salinas has been shooting professionally since she graduated from the International Center of Photography in June 2003.

Salinas's work has been published in several issues of The New York Times Magazine and The New York Times Magazine Annual NY Issue. She was chosen as Photo District News Rising Star in the January 2005 issue and recently chosen as one of PDN's 30 new and emerging photographers. Her work has been exhibited at Room in New York City and at the International Center of Photography Fellows Exhibition and Full-Time Student Exhibition in New York City. Salinas was awarded the International Center of Photography Merit Scholarship Sponsored by the Henry M. Margolis Foundation and Josephine Lyons during her full-time studies at the International Center of Photography, and the Erin Barry & Oliver Sharp Fellowship in 2003.