2024 WOPHA Research Fellowship recipients announcement

WOPHA / 07.22.2024

We are pleased to announce the recipients of the 2024 WOPHA Research Fellowship: Isabella Marie Garcia, an independent arts professional, writer, and photographer from Miami, Florida, and Dr. Candice Jansen, a Black-Indigenous photo-memorist from South Africa. Coinciding with the celebration of the WOPHA Congress, which will take place from October 23 to 26, 2024, at the Pérez Art Museum Miami and other locations across South Florida, this year’s research projects explore:

• Women, photography, and education
• Women photographers as teachers, mentors, and educators
• Historical and contemporary experimental practices of women’s photography education

Garcia’s project, “The Photography Care Matrix: Teaching Traditional and Experimental Photo Techniques Within Prison Environments, Residential Rehabs, and Alternative Schools,” highlights the historical and active work of women and non-binary photographers teaching traditional and experimental photography techniques in non-traditional teaching spaces. Dr. Jansen’s project, “Dark Room Girls IV: On Mme Cynthia Mavuso,” continues her exploration of Cynthia Mavuso’s underrecognized photographic practice, highlighting her influential role in Mkhondo, South Africa. Both fellows will present their findings at the 2024 WOPHA Congress.

About the WOPHA Research Fellowship

The WOPHA Research Fellowship supports exemplary research by emerging and established authors examining themes related to women and non-binary voices in photography. It facilitates the creation of scholarly essays engaging with primary and secondary sources while supporting authors through access to mentorship, networking, and publication opportunities.

The fellowship, conducted remotely from July to November, includes a 15-day residency at The Betsy Hotel in Miami, Florida. Participants receive a $2,000 stipend, mentorship tailored to their interests, access to the Caribbean Cultural Institute (CCI) and C& Critical Writing Workshop, and support for publishing their final essays on WOPHA’s digital platforms and pitching to other online publications.

The 2024-2025 WOPHA Research Fellowship is supported by the Pérez CreArte grant program by the Jorge M. Pérez Family Foundation at The Miami Foundation and The Betsy Hotel. Cultural partners include Contemporary& and the Caribbean Cultural Institute at PAMM.

About the Winners

Isabella “Isa” Marie Garcia is an independent arts professional, writer, and photographer living in her native swampland of Miami, Florida. Garcia is a 2023 Locust Projects Wavemaker Research and Implementation Grant Recipient for her photo-based project titled What Happens When the Dust Settles?, which is investigating holistic aftercare in relation to death and grief, and in proximity to Latinx, BIPOC, and Indigenous communities. For the past six years, Garcia has worked with local and national arts-based organizations such as Burnaway, Ten North Group, Tropic Bound Artist Book Fair, LnS Gallery, and UNTITLED, Art. She participated in an alternative arts residency titled School of the Alternative in Black Mountain, North Carolina as their documentarian in 2023 and faculty in 2024, with recent solo and curated exhibitions including INFRAMUNDO at Tunnel Projects (April 2024) and UPROOTED at Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (April 2024). Her writing has appeared in publications such as On/Off Shore: Poets of the Caribbean and Caribbean Diaspora, Burnaway, The Art Newspaper, The Miami New Times, and So To Speak: A feminist journal of language and art print publication. Garcia graduated summa cum laude with her Bachelor of Arts in English from Florida International University in 2019.

Project: The Photography Care Matrix: Teaching Traditional and Experimental Photo-Techniques within Prison Environments, Residential Rehabs, and Alternative Schools.
Abstract: “The Photography Care Matrix: Teaching Traditional and Experimental Photo Techniques within Prison Environments, Residential Rehabs, and Alternative Schools” will research the nature and impact of teaching work by women and non-binary photographers within correctional facilities and institutions, residential treatment centers, and alternative schools at the local, national, and international level. This research will provide a scholarly framework to support and expand Garcia’s hands-on experience as a teaching artist.

Candice Jansen is a memorist. She practices as a photographer, writer, editor, curator, scholar, archivist, and educator on photography. Currently she is a New Archival Visions, Digital Curatorial Fellow at the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape. Jansen has studied the life and works of South African photographers Cedric Nunn and Ernest Cole. Her dissertation, Coloured Black: The Life & Works of Cedric Nunn & Ernest Cole (2019) was completed at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WiSER) with the partial support of a pre-doctoral fellowship in the Program in Critical Theory from Northwestern University. Additionally, she served as Curator of Research and Exhibitions at the Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg (2019–2021) and is editor of Black Photo Libraries (2021), a research collection on photographic legacies. Jansen has written and spoken on photography for the Toronto Photography Seminar, Aperture Magazine, the Tate Modern, Centers of Learning for Photography in Africa, the Johannesburg Art Gallery, the Africa South Art Initiative, Magnum Photos, Centre for Curating the Archive, and the Museum of Modern Art. 

Project: Dark Room Girls IV: On Mme Cynthia Mavuso
Abstract: Cynthia Mavuso (1959-) is a retired photographer and teacher who was an influential figure in her small rural area of Mkhondo in South Africa. This project continues Candice Jansen’s research on Mavuso by exploring her under recognized photographic practice as a form of world-making against history’s odds.