About

MISSION

Our mission is to highlight the contributions of women photographers to modern and contemporary art in order to rewrite the artistic canon and provoke social change. Women Photographers International Archive (WOPHA) began as a dynamic database showcasing the unique stories of women-identified Cuban photographers. Building on this success, WOPHA has expanded its geographic scope while retaining its core commitment to promote and research, in partnership with other organizations, the plurality of female, trans, queer, and other non-binary voices in photography.

HISTORY

Women Photographers International Archive (WOPHA) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded by art curator Aldeide Delgado and artist Francisco Maso to research, promote, support, and educate on the role of women and those identified as women or non-binary in photography. The archive’s origins trace back to 2013 when Delgado created the project Catalog of Cuban Women Photographers.

The Catalog of Cuban Women Photographers is the first project to comprehensively collate the works of Cuban women photographers spanning the 19th century through the present. The Catalog, imbued with a distinct historiographic and critical character, is an interactive online platform that offers information for artists, curators, critics, and other cultural agents through a dynamic database of creators, publications, and exhibitions. As the primary aim of the Catalog is to locate, document, and acknowledge gaps in information on the contributors to the development of Cuban photography, WOPHA intentionally expands these efforts to an international scale, creating a space to celebrate women in the photographic arts.

WOPHA encourages the exhibition, collection, and active scholarship of works by women photographers, empowering art historians and art curators to share them more frequently with the public. Our activities include the digitization of historical archives, the creation of a center of information and specialized library of books about women photographers, the publication of catalogs and books, the presentation of lectures and workshops, the establishment of artist residencies and fellowships, and the development of online and physical exhibitions. We have a strong focus on historical research- producing rigorous academic content with particular emphasis on the diverse artistic production of Latin American and Latinx communities, including photographers from Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and artists of Latin American descent living and working in the United States.

*We embrace the term women as a political subject who recognizes that there are different ways to be a woman according to class, race, sexual orientation, age, religion, creed, ability and gender. It is inclusive of all cis and trans women in addition to any person who identifies as woman.

TEAM

ALDEIDE DELGADO

Founder & Director

@aldeidedelgado

#aldeidedelgado

Aldeide Delgado is the founder and director of Women Photographers International Archive (WOPHA). She has a background in advising and presenting at art history forums based on photography including, lectures at the Tate Modern, Perez Art Museum Miami, The New School, and California Institute of the Arts. Delgado is a recent recipient of a 2019 Knight Arts Challenge, 2018 School of Art Criticism Fellowship, and a 2017 Research and Production of Critic Essay Fellowship. She is the author of the online archive Catalog of Cuban Women Photographers, as well as the namesake ongoing book. Publications, where she has contributed, include Cuban Art News, Artishock, Terremoto, C&America Latina, Arcadia, as well as diverse independent art blogs. She writes for Artishock, Terremoto, ArtNexus, and C&America Latina. She is an active member of PAMM’s International Women’s Committee, IKT International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art, US Latinx Art Forum and Art Table.

FRANCISCO MASO

Founder & Creative Director

@fcomaso

#franciscomaso

Francisco Maso is the cofounder and creative director of Women Photographers International Archive (WOPHA). Two-time Cintas Foundation Fellowship finalist, he holds a Bachelor’s degree in Stage Design from the Instituto Superior de Arte and is a graduate of both the Behavior Art School and the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts. Maso developed the visual identity and website of Catalog of Cuban Women Photographers. He is the author of the book Post PostProduction Project (2012-2015), that explored the audiovisual piracy phenomenon and its social implications; and the ongoing book The History of Obtusism. Recent exhibitions include Time for Change: Art and Social Unrest in the Jorge M. Pérez Collection at El Espacio 23 (2019), Cintas Foundation Fellowships Finalist Exhibition 2019-2020 at Lowe Art Museum (2019), and 10 - A Decade at Dimensions Variable (2019). His works are part of Jorge M. Pérez Collection, Brillembourg Capriles Collection, and Nina Fuentes Collection.

AMANDA BRADLEY

Community Coordinator

@amandabradley

#amandabradley

Amanda Bradley is an artist and arts administrator based in Miami, Florida. Bradley received her BFA from New World School of the Arts in Photography. In Miami, she has worked with institutions like Bakehouse Art Complex, Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), and the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami. Her work has been exhibited in Further than Memory, Intimate Distances at ArtMedia Gallery; Notices in a Mutable Terrain at Fundacion Pablo Atchugarry; It will never become quite familiar to you at Oolite Arts, RCS: 76-100 at Swampspace Gallery; The Passing of Time at the Alfred DuPont Building; american fine arts, an allegory for americas at Art Movement LA, California and Current Projects in Little Haiti, Florida; and In This Moment at PH21 Gallery in Budapest, Hungary; amongst others.

FRANCIS OLIVER

Editor

@francisdalena

#francisoliver

Francis Oliver is a Latinx cultural researcher, editor, and proofreader based in Athens, Georgia. Originally from Miami, Francis studied Biology and Environmental Science and Policy at the University of Miami and worked in various capacities at the radio station WVUM and the university library. She worked for six years in collections management, archival research, oral histories, curatorial assistance, and artist residency supervision at the Deering Estate museum and ecological field station. She is interested in the intersections of public history, archives, cultural geography, political ecology, diaspora studies, and contemporary art.