WOPHA and PAMM announce highlights of the first-ever WOPHA Congress: “Women, Photography, and Feminisms.”

WOPHA / 07.08.2021

Women Photographers International Archive (WOPHA), and Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) announce highlights of the inaugural WOPHA Congress. Titled Women, Photography, and Feminisms, this first international convening of its kind invites women photography organizations and artists around the world to an in-person and online space for dialogue, celebration, and critical debate about women’s contributions to modern and contemporary art, with the aim of rewriting the established artistic canon and provoking social change.

Conceptualized by WOPHA Founder and Director, Latinx art historian, and curator Aldeide Delgado, the Congress will take place at PAMM and online on November 18 and 19, 2021 and is free and open to all. A program of city-wide photography exhibitions and related events will accompany the Congress.

“I believe in the power of photography as a political force to rearrange the structure of power and domination of society,” Delgado says. “I am inspired by the legacy of the Female Division of the Cuban Photography Club and how, as a space for women’s socialization, it broadened the possibilities for creation and recognition of the artistic praxis of women in the public space. In this same vein, I have conceived the WOPHA Congress as a space that will render women photographers visible while advancing critical debate about modern and contemporary photography by women and non-binary practitioners.”

“Pérez Art Museum Miami is the ideal place for the convening of the Women Photographers International Archive’s first Congress,” comments PAMM Director Franklin Sirmans. “As a relatively young institution, PAMM’s commitment to photography has been integrally ingrained in the life of the institution, since we became a collecting museum in 1994. I am delighted that we get to work again with our dear friend and colleague, esteemed art historian and curator, Aldeide Delgado.”

The WOPHA Congress, a Knight Arts Challenge winner, is organized with the guidance of an Advisory Committee comprising prominent international photography curators and thought leaders Idurre Alonso, Associate Curator of Latin American Collections at the Getty Research Institute; Mane Adaro, Director and Editor of Atlas: Visual Imaginary, art historian and curator; the late Maurice Berger, writer, cultural historian, and curator; Alpesh Kantilal Patel, Associate Professor of Contemporary Art and Theory at Florida International University (FIU), and Marie Vickles, Director of Education at PAMM.

More than 25 internationally-recognized scholars and artists from around the world will participate in the two-day interactive congress, including Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, Professor of Modern Culture and Media and Comparative Literature at Brown University; Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, Co-founder of MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora; Elizabeth Ferrer, writer and curator; Anna Fox, Founder of Fast Forward: Women in Photography; Roxana Marcoci, Senior Curator of Photography at MoMA; Abigail Solomon-Godeau, Professor Emerita at University of California; Maggie Steber, award-winning documentary photographer, and Deborah Willis, Professor of Photography and Imaging at NYU.

Women, Photography, and Feminisms will bring to center stage the idea of photography as a collaborative practice, addressing topics of feminist aesthetics, the decolonization of archives, and curatorial strategies. The program will present seminal and emerging research about women photographers’ work and changes to institutions and their structures and hierarchies in a fundamental way.

A special conversation between Delgado and Andrea Nelson, Associate Curator in the Department of Photographs at the National Gallery of Art and Curator of the exhibition The New Woman Behind the Camera, organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington in association with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York will take place in November. The conversation will explore the curatorial process behind this groundbreaking exhibition, which will reveal the significant impact women have had on the history of modern photography.

While the WOPHA Congress will advance WOPHA’s wider global mission, it also aims to establish Miami as an international center and meeting place for modern and contemporary photography and critical conversations around the role of women in photography. 

Partnerships with leading Miami-based and international arts and photography organizations, among them Arts Connection Foundation, Green Family Foundation, Green Space Miami, El Espacio 23, Faena Art, Lucie Foundation, Oolite Arts, The Betsy Hotel, and Rubell Museum are expanding WOPHA’s local and global footprint. These partners will host a vibrant and collaborative program of photography exhibitions, performances, artist residencies and studio visits as part of the Congress.

A newly-formed partnership with 1854 Media, publisher of British Journal of Photography, brings the highly-anticipated exhibition of works by the winners of its 2021 Female in Focus photography competition, for which Delgado is a juror, to Miami for the first time. The exhibition will take place at the newly-inaugurated Green Space Miami gallery on the eve of Art Basel Miami Beach.

The health and safety of attendees at the WOPHA Congress and its related events are a priority. The organization will follow CDC, state, and local guidance.

Register now for the WOPHA Congress: 

In-person     Virtual

The WOPHA Congress is co-presented by Women Photographers International Archive (WOPHA) and Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM).

Lead support is provided by John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

JW Marriott Marquis Miami is the Official Hotel Partner. 

Major support is provided by Arts Connection Foundation, Green Family Foundation, and The Jorge M. Pérez Family Foundation at The Miami Foundation.

Additional support is provided by Bechily-Hodes Family Foundation, Beth Rudin DeWoody, Cindy and Robert Friezo Foundation, the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States, Duvin Collaborative, Hotel Beaux Arts Miami and Boulud Sud Miami, the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau, Leica Store Miami, Maya Ibars, Esq., the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners, Miami Downtown Development Authority and Oolite Arts.

Cultural Partners include 1854 Media, publishers of British Journal of Photography, El Espacio 23, Faena Art, Green Space Miami, Lucie Foundation, Rubell Museum and The Betsy Hotel.

In-kind media support is provided by Cultured Magazine.

The WOPHA Congress is an initiative presented in association with the Feminist Art Coalition.

About 

Women Photographers International Archive (WOPHA) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded to research, promote, support, and educate, in partnership with other international organizations, on the role of those who identify as women or non-binary in photography. Having begun as a dynamic database showcasing the unique stories of women-identified Cuban photographers, WOPHA has expanded its geographic scope to include photographers around the globe. The organization is currently documenting 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.

Aldeide Delgado is the founder and director of Women Photographers International Archive (WOPHA). She is also an art historian and curator who has lectured on photography at the Tate Modern, Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), The New School, and California Institute of the Arts. Delgado is a recipient of a 2019 Knight Arts Challenge Award, 2018 School of Art Criticism Fellowship by SAPS-LT, and a 2017 Research and Production of Critic Essay Fellowship by Teor/éTica. Her areas of scholarly interest include a feminist and decolonial re-reading of the history of photography and abstraction from the Latin American, the Caribbean, and Latinx contexts. She is the author of the online archive Catalog of Cuban Women Photographers and is currently working on a related book, which collates, for the first time, the works of Cuban women photographers from the 19th century to the present. She frequently contributes to international publications, including Artishock, Terremoto, and C& América 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.

Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), led by Director Franklin Sirmans, promotes artistic expression and the exchange of ideas, advancing public knowledge and appreciation of art, architecture, and design, and reflecting the diverse community of its pivotal geographic location at the crossroads of the Americas. The 37-year-old South Florida institution, formerly known as Miami Art Museum (MAM), opened a new building, designed by world-renowned architects Herzog & de Meuron, on December 4, 2013 in Downtown Miami’s Maurice A. Ferré Park. The facility is a state-of-the-art model for sustainable museum design and progressive programming and features 200,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor program space with flexible galleries; shaded outdoor verandas; a waterfront restaurant and bar; a museum shop; and an education center with a library, media lab, and classroom spaces.

Knight Foundation is a national foundation with strong local roots. We invest in journalism, in the arts, and in the success of cities where brothers John S. and James L. Knight once published newspapers. Our goal is to foster informed and engaged communities, which we believe are essential for a healthy democracy.

The JW Marriott Marquis Miami is situated in the heart of Metropolitan Miami development in Downtown. The first-to-market JW Marriott Marquis property boasts 313 guestrooms, inclusive of 56 suites, along with a broad array of amenities, including renowned chef-restaurateur, Daniel Boulud’s Mediterranean gem, Boulud Sud. Offering a diverse setting for business, meeting, and pleasure travel pursuits, the 41-story hotel features three concierge levels; 80,000-square-feet of total function space including a 20,000 sq. ft. Grand Ballroom; and one of the most unique indoor sports, lifestyle, and entertainment complexes of any hotel in the U.S. The 50,000-square-foot, two-story indoor facility includes an NBA-approved basketball arena, tennis court, Mariano Bartolome Golf School, virtual bowling alley, billiards, full-service Enliven spa and salon, and more. Owned and operated by Met 2 Hotels LLC, the JW Marriott Marquis Miami is located at 255 Biscayne Boulevard Way, Miami, FL.

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