Leo Matiz was born on April 1, 1917 in Aracataca, also the birthplace of Gabriel García Márquez. During the early thirties Matiz produced caricatures for the magazine Civilización and founded a publication called Lauros. In 1935 he traveled to Bogotá and studied at the National School of Fine Arts there. In 1937 Enrique Santos ("Calibán"), the editor of El Tiempo, urged Matiz to work for him and gave him a camera as a present.. During this same period. Matiz studied and worked in the studio of Luis B. Ramos who was known as the father of modern Colombian photography. In 1939 he began his first tour of Colombia as a documentary photographer and worked as a photo-reporter for El Tiempo, El Espectador, and La Estampa.

In 1941 he settled in Mexico City and the following year succeeded in entering the Mazatlán prison as an inmate where he shot an extraordinary reportage about prison conditions which brought him international acclaim. During this same period, he established a friendship with Manuel Alvarez Bravo collaborating with him on various film projects. In 1947 he worked with David Alfaro Siqueiros on the mural "Cuauhtemoc against the Myth." That same year he participated in a photography exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and his work appeared in various magazines including Norte, Look, Life, and Colliers. By the end of 1949 Leo Matiz was recognized as one of the ten best living photographers in the world. The photographs of Leo Matiz have been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout Latin America, Europe and the United States and have appeared in publications worldwide. In the 1990s several books on his work were published in Europe, including L'Objective Magique in France, and, in Italy, Leo Matiz: Fotografie; Leo Matiz: L' Occhio Divino; and Il Terzo Occhio. In Italy, he was also awarded the "Horus Sicof" prize (1995) and "Filo d' Argento" prize (1997). The exhibition "Master of the Camera," organized in tribute to Matiz, toured the United States in 1996.