Victor Manuel Diaz was born on February 19, 1942, in the city of Guadalajara, in the state of Jalisco, Mexico. Victor’s life-long fascination with photography began at the age of 10, when he took his first photograph. It wasn’t long before he was seeking out, and buying the best cameras and film. He even designed his own darkroom so he could personally develop his own pictures.

Eventually, his passion for photography drove him to build a photography lab where he could explore the latest techniques for producing quality pictures. The dye transfer process instantly became his favorite method of developing superior photographs. By the age of 30. with the assistance of his wife, Martha, Victor was producing all of his images in dye transfer.

His first collection featured the works of many local photographers in Guadalajara. Eventually, Victor’s collection began to attract world-wide attention. Soon, world-renowned photographers like Ernest Haas, Harry Callahan, and Robert Vavra, (to name but three) would join his ever-growing circle of friends.

Victor eventually immigrated to California, bringing with him his entire (by now impressive!) collection of valuable photographic prints. He opened his collection in San Ysidro, in Camino De La Plaza. When his collection exceeded the space in San Ysidro, he transferred the entire collection to Chula Vista, combining, and sharing, photographic exhibition space with his radio stations. There, he continued collecting works of famous, as well as unknown/lesser-known photographers. Basically, Victor’s mission was to find and collect photographs of the highest quality, produced using printing techniques that would last for decades.

Victor Diaz was an innovator, a rebel, a true visionary. As a passionate lover of classical music, he was convinced that anyone could learn to appreciate this beautiful art form. To make classical music accessible to as wide an audience as possible, he began XLNC1 as an internet radio station in 1998, streaming the great classics 24 hours a day at www.xlnc1.org.

Next, he brought classical music to the people of San Diego and Northern Baja California when he founded the radio station, XLNC1. The station began broadcasting at 90.7 FM on the radio dial on February 14, 2000.

Since the station's inception, there has been an enthusiastic response not only from Southern California and Northern Baja, but from around the world—even from as far away as Antarctica. A scientist from McMurdo Station on Ross Island, Antarctica wrote: "Your music warms our laboratory as we search for fossils in the 34 million-year-old sediment cores recovered from the bottom of the Ross Sea by the Cape Roberts Project. What a delightful gift you provide the whole world!"

Victor Diaz's vision was to create a bi-national radio station that would entertain, and educate audiences in both Mexico and the United States about classical music. XLNC-1 90.7 FM is the only classical music radio station in the world that broadcasts in both English and Spanish; and is the only full-time classical music station on the radio dial in San Diego and Northern Baja California.

With the opportunity for easy 24-hour access to great music, Victor was convinced that many people would learn to appreciate classical music. He was often fond of saying that he converted more people into classical music lovers than any symphony orchestra or opera company ever could; because, every year hundreds of thousands of people were able to tune in to XLNC1 for free any time of the day or night.

Since his untimely passing on October 27, 2004, Victor’s wife, Martha Barba de Diaz, has kept his universal classical dream alive. XLNC1 is his gift—a fitting legacy to classical music lovers around the world.