Maggie Steber. Madje Steber enjoys breakfast in bed at Midtown Manor, assisted living facility in Hollywood, Florida where she resides, 2007. © Maggie Steber. Courtesy of the artist.

Maggie Steber has traveled to 71 countries as an award-winning photographer.

She has taken photos of a guerrilla war in Zimbabwe. In Haiti, she witnessed the atrocities of the end of the Duvalier regime. And she was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for her years-long project documenting the world’s youngest face transplant recipient, an 18-year-old girl who underwent the procedure in Cleveland.

But the photos that mean the most to her are of her mother, Madje Steber, who was diagnosed with dementia at 80. The daughter of a single mother, Steber took care of her over a nine-year period and documented her mother’s decline through her photography, “Madje Has Dementia.” She died in Steber’s arms in 2009, one week after her 89th birthday.

“I didn’t really have anybody … I thought this is my last chance to love,” she says. “Photography really saved me. Those photographs are still my greatest treasures.”

The project landed on the cover of National Geographic and a two-page spread inside the magazine.

“So my little mama was a cover girl for NatGeo,” she said. “And I am so proud.”

Steber will be one of the panelists at the inaugural WOPHA Congress: “Women, Photography, and Feminisms,” co-presented by Women Photographers International Archive (WOPHA) and Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM). The conference, to be held November 18-19 at PAMM and virtually, will bring together women photographers, scholars, curators, and artists from more than 15 countries, including Marie Robert, chief curator of photography at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris; Whitney Johnson, vice president of visuals and immersive experiences at National Geographic Partners; and Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, a documentary photographer and co-founder of MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora.

In concert with WOPHA, an exhibition of award-winning women’s photography from around the globe, titled, “Female in Focus,” will open Thursday at Green Space Miami, 7200 Biscayne Blvd. The opening is from 7 to 10 p.m. and it will run through January 18, 2022.

The exhibition, presented with 1854 Media and the British Journal of Photography, will showcase the works of the winners of the Female in Focus award, launched in 2019 to help correct gender imbalance in photography.

The idea for the Congress was born out of Aldeide Delgado’s desire to create a spot for women photographers that she felt was lacking in Miami. Born in Cuba, Delgado is an art historian and curator with a focus on feminist and Latinx art history. “For women photographers, we didn’t have a place we can connect,” said Delgado, founder and director of Women Photographers International Archive (WOPHA). “When I came to Miami…I noticed we didn’t have a dedicated place for the promotion of photographic arts.”

The Congress, sponsored by the Knight Foundation and others, is free. One of the three keynote speakers will be Roxana Marcoci, senior curator of photography at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

“When I was coming up in photography, there were a lot of women and even before me, powerful and courageous women covering everything from war to local stories, but many of them were on newspapers staffs and so you didn’t really hear about them,” Steber said. “We are now seeing a whole new generation of women photographers from all over the world.”

Steber will be part of a five-person panel discussing documentary photography.

“I love to encourage people to use their imaginations,” Steber said. “There will be opportunities to brainstorm with people and give them advice and that is just a joyful act for me.”

Maggie Steber. Masuda Dreams of the Past, 2005. © Maggie Steber. Courtesy of the artist.

Cuban art historian and curator Aldeide Delgado sits in a white room, complete with white curtains. She wears a white shirt as she speaks to New Times via Zoom. The only color in the frame is the black chair that peeks out from behind her shoulders.

Delgado speaks passionately about her women-in-photography project. Her delicate gold necklace bounces along as she gestures.

While studying art history at the University of Havana in Cuba, Delgado realized that women were predominantly left out of the conversation. The contributions of female artists — let alone photographers — rarely made the mention in her textbooks.

“You are surrounded by propaganda in school and in all the public imagery that you see on the island,” Delgado says. “It’s a lot of photography used to reinforce the ideology from the social transformation of the 1950s and ‘70s [in Cuba].”

As a historian and curator, she felt that something needed to be done to give more visibility to women photographers. In 2013, she began an online database where she collected her extensive research and called the online space Women Photographers International Archive (WOPHA). As the years went by, the database continued to grow.

“For me, it was very important to create a project that would be like rereading of the history of photography and of that idea of how the Cuban nation was built, but from a feminist perspective,” Delgado explains.

As she delved into her research, she asked herself one simple question: What has been the contribution of women to photography’s history?

At first, her focus was on Cuban female artists. Later, WOPHA expanded its framework to document the work of Latin American artists, including those who live in the U.S

In 2016, Delgado made the move to Miami from the island 90 miles offshore. Three years later, she received her first Knight Arts Challenge grant to help organize the inaugural WOPHA Congress, which takes place later this month.

WOPHA Congress: Women, Photography, and Feminisms is a two-day event that will take place at venues across Miami and with online presentations in the virtual space

For its November 18-19 conference, WOPHA boasts a list of notable local and international art and photography organizations as sponsors and supporters, including Pérez Art Museum Miami, Arts Connection Foundation, Green Family Foundation, Green Space Miami, El Espacio 23, Faena Art, Lucie Foundation, Oolite Arts, the Betsy Hotel, and the Rubell Museum. These partners will either be hosting an event or artist residencies and studio visits as part of the WOPHA Congress.

Attendees can participate in person or via the internet. Panels and lectures will feature a bevy of artists and curators, including Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, professor of modern culture and media and comparative literature at Brown University; Roxana Marcoci, senior curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York; documentary photographer Maggie Steber; and Deborah Willis, professor of photography and imaging at New York University.

Part of the WOPHA Congress program includes announcing the winner of its artists-in-residency program with the Betsy Hotel for this coming year.

“What’s crucial for me is that we continue to support the work of the artist in the long term,” Delgado says. “It’s important that we are not only selecting the artist for a specific program today but that we think about how we will continue to support them in the future.”

Delgado describes her role as providing a unique relationship with marginalized identities in the arts.

“My approach to the arts has always been to help give a voice to those who may have been left out of the history books. I strive to create an impact through my work [as historian and curator].”

Delgado says the archive truly evolved once she moved to Miami. She officially founded WOPHA as a nonprofit in 2018, two years after moving to the Magic City.

“I always say that WOPHA emerged from my process of adapting to the city of Miami,” she says, smiling broadly. “Living in Miami, I embrace and identify with the cultural character of the city. I started to think about what my contribution to the city could be. I thought a lot about this idea of history and memory.”

At its core, WOPHA is about building community among women photographers and artists. To that end, Delgado plans to host a WOPHA Congress every three years. She also aims to find a physical location for the international archive in Miami.

“I look forward to continuing to lay the foundation to ultimately create a physical space for WOPHA and help create more opportunities for women photographers,” she says.

Stephanie Noritz. Noritz-Reyes Family, Toronto, 2021. © Stephanie Noritz. Courtesy of the artist.

The Female in Focus award from 1854 Media and the British Journal of Photography addresses the gender imbalance in photography. Globally, 70-80% of photography students are women, yet they account for only 13-15% of professional photographers. This selection of work demonstrates a tapestry of women’s experiences from around the world. An exhibition at Green Space Miami as part of the inaugural WOPHA Congress will take place from 18 November 2021 to 18 January 2022, sponsored by MPB.

Published on The Guardian website. October 5, 2021

Female in Focus in Miami is made possible thanks to the support from Green Family Foundation, Green Space Miami, and the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, the Cultural Affairs Council, and the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners.

Anna Fox. Hampshire village Pram Race, 2006. © Anna Fox. Courtesy of the artist and James Hyman Gallery.

Aldeide Delgado sees Miami as a border, a meeting place, a city for global minds and ideas to gather and exchange perspectives and criticisms. Thus, it is the perfect venue for an international congregation of scholars and thinkers—in Delgado’s case, the inaugural Women Photographers International Archive (WOPHA) Congress, a summit for women in photography that will gather photographers, historians and curators from over 15 different countries at the Pérez Art Museum Miami come November 18. Entitled Women, Photography, and Feminisms, the Congress is the first of its kind, a necessary trailblazing force for marginalized voices in the field.

Delgado founded nonprofit WOPHA with an aim to amplify the contributions of female, trans, queer and non-binary photographers and thinkers in modern and contemporary art. The ethos for the Congress began with Delgado’s Catalogue of Cuban Women Photographers, an online database dedicated to preserving the work of female photographers in Cuba. Conditioned by her experience living in Miami since 2016 and assuming a Latinx identity, she expanded the catalogue globally, resulting in WOPHA. She explains that though strides for female representation in art and photography have been made in the aftermath of movements like #MeToo, necessary work remains.

“All of these political scenarios have influenced groups of women photography organizations and collectives,” she says. “And that’s why it’s so important to make the Congress the first international convening, where these organizations and collectives can get together.”

Over 25 internationally recognized scholars and photographers will be participating in the Congress, which is free and open to all, both virtually and in-person. The Congress will be punctuated by conversations on collaboration, aesthetics and closing the gap for women in the arts, through the gaze of feminism and decolonization. Conversations will feature scholars such as Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, co-founder of MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora; Anna Fox, founder of Fast Forward: Women in Photography; Roxana Marcoci, Senior Curator of Photography at MoMA; and award-winning documentary photographer Maggie Steber, among others.

WOPHA will engage with other institutions across Miami, including the Arts Connection Foundation, Green Space Miami, Lucie Foundation, The Betsy Hotel, and the Rubell Museum. The inclusion of various spaces throughout the city reflects Delgado’s hopes of cementing Miami as a crucial space for discourse and conversation and “positioning WOPHA in the international context.”

“Expanding the scope of the project is a result of me identifying with the political character of the city and noticing the importance of highlighting women’s work from not just the Caribbean, Latin America and South Florida, but worldwide in general,” the founder says, “and how through this concept of the border space, that can be made possible.”

One of the most anticipated happenings of the event is Delgado’s conversation with Andrea Nelson, curator of “The New Woman Behind the Camera,” organized by the National Gallery of Art in association with The Metropolitan Museum of Art. In conjunction with the wide array of discourse at the Congress, it will explore the impact of women on modern photography.

The Congress will also feature the United States debut of Luce Lebart and Marie Robert’s Une Histoire Mondiale Des Femmes Photographes, an anthology comprising over 450 images from more than 300 female photographers across history.

Delgado hopes to gather the Congress every three years, enabling the collective to “continue the proposals that we make in the Congress,” she says. “This is about taking action. It’s about creating our own spaces and how we can increase our impact in a worldwide context.”

Ultimately, she hopes that the gatherings will have external influence on the world of photography. “We are looking to impact the programming of institutions, encouraging them to collect, exhibit and research women’s practices in photography,” Delgado says. “We want to see more opportunities for women photographers.”

Written by Liza Mullett | 10.21.2021

This text was originally published at Cultured Magazine

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