South Florida Latin American Photography Forum

10/10/2026

SoFLaFoto announces the Mexico Fotolibro Archive

The Photobook Art Lab, a South Florida Latin American Photography Forum (SoFLaFoto) project, presents the third archive drawn from our founder’s library of fotolibros (photobooks), which is on loan to the Lab.

The Mexico Fotolibro Archive holds 143 photobooks, catalogues and journals of Mexican photography, from Manuel Álvarez Bravo and Tina Modotti to Graciela Iturbide and Alejandro Cartagena. The archive includes:

Mexican photographers, grouped by period from the 1920s to the present
the fotógrafos viajeros who came to photograph the country
surveys and critical histories
the festivals and biennials of the Centro de la Imagen
the journal Luna Córnea

Explore the archive: https://www.soflafoto.org/mexico-fotolibro-archive

The books documented in this archive belong to the founder’s private library and are made available to SoFLaFoto as an educational and research resource. Their inclusion does not transfer ownership to SoFLaFoto, and the books are not available for loan or sale. Bibliographic data is drawn from the archive’s catalogue and is being checked against publisher and library records. Corrections are welcome. Cover images are shown for identification only; rights holders may request their removal.

143 photobooks, catalogues and journals of Mexican photography, from Álvarez Bravo and Modotti to Iturbide and Cartagena. A SoFLaFoto Photobook Art Lab archive.

10/10/2026

SoFLaFoto announces the Cuba Fotolibro Archive

The Photobook Art Lab, a South Florida Latin American Photography Forum (SoFLaFoto) project, continues to make its collection public. The collection is drawn from our founder’s library of fotolibros (photobooks), which is on loan to the Lab.

The second archive is the Cuba Fotolibro Archive. It holds 135 photobooks and catalogues of Cuban photography, from the 1930s to today. The archive has four sections:

photographers working on the island
the photography of exile and the diaspora
the fotógrafos viajeros who came to photograph Cuba
surveys and histories of Cuban photography

Explore the archive: https://www.soflafoto.org/cuba-fotolibro-archive

The books documented in this archive belong to the founder’s private library and are made available to SoFLaFoto as an educational and research resource. Their inclusion does not transfer ownership to SoFLaFoto, and the books are not available for loan or sale. Bibliographic data is drawn from the archive’s catalogue and is being checked against publisher and library records. Corrections are welcome. Cover images are shown for identification only; rights holders may request their removal.

135 photobooks and catalogues of Cuban photography: the island, the diaspora and the fotógrafos viajeros, 1930s to today. A SoFLaFoto Photobook Art Lab archive.

10/10/2026

SoFLaFoto announces the Fotolibro Q***r Archive

For many years, our founder has built a personal library of fotolibros (photobooks). That library is now on loan to the Photobook Art Lab, a South Florida Latin American Photography Forum (SoFLaFoto) project. The collection focuses on Latin American, Latinx and q***r narratives. Over the past two months, we have documented and catalogued it so that the public can see it.

The first archive to come out of this work is the Fotolibro Q***r Archive. It holds 82 photobooks, catalogues and periodicals about LGBTQ+ lives across Latin America and the Latinx Americas. It is also part of our project Picturing Q***rness in the Americas.

Explore the archive: https://www.soflafoto.org/fotolibro-q***r-archive

The books documented in this archive belong to the founder’s private library and are made available to SoFLaFoto as an educational and research resource. Their inclusion does not transfer ownership to SoFLaFoto, and the books are not available for loan or sale. Bibliographic data is drawn from the archive’s catalogue and is being checked against publisher and library records. Corrections are welcome. Cover images are shown for identification only; rights holders may request their removal.

82 photobooks, catalogues and periodicals of LGBTQ+ lives across Latin America and the Latinx Americas. Part of SoFLaFoto's Picturing Q***rness in the Americas.

10/08/2026

📚 SoFLaFoto’s Fotolibro Q***r Archive is now online.

A program of Picturing Q***rness in the Americas 🌎, the archive collects and documents photobooks, fotolibros, catalogs and periodicals that record q***r and LGBTQ+ lives 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️. Its focus is Latin American and Latinx photography, read alongside the global and historical work that gives it context.

📖 On the shelf:
▪️ Paz Errázuriz, La Manzana de Adán 🇨🇱
▪️ Archivo de la Memoria Trans Argentina 🇦🇷
▪️ Kenny Lemes, Mariposas que vuelan de noche 🇦🇷
▪️ Orestes González, Julio’s House, made in Miami 🌴
▪️ Elle Pérez, Devotions 📷

…and many more, from Mexico, Cuba, Colombia, Guatemala, Chicanx Los Angeles and beyond.

The archive is a living collection and keeps growing. We welcome suggestions, corrections and conversations with artists and publishers ✉️

🔗 Browse it at soflafoto.org → Projects → Picturing Q***rness. Link in bio.

***rArchive ***rness

09/27/2026

🚶🏽‍♂️ Yesterday we walked the chaotic streets of Mexico City's Centro Histórico with celebrated Mexican photographer Yolanda Andrade (Yolanda Andrade fotógrafa), and she led us to Centro Cultural Bellas Hartas (Bellas Hartas | Espacio cultural). Its work with and for the LGBTQ+ community speaks directly to our own project, Picturing Q***rness in the Americas: art as a space of visibility, memory, and belonging. 🏳️‍🌈

🖼️ Two exhibitions, one visit
In the storefront windows, Teresa Margolles' Pistas de baile (2016) portrays trans women s*x workers standing on the remains of demolished nightclubs and dance halls in Ciudad Juárez, former places of encounter and work. Margolles traced the exact outline of each lost dance floor with water, turning abandoned lots into sites of memory, while the women hold the center of the frame with firmness and dignity. Inside the gallery, the group show Tratado de libre comercio borrows the language of trade agreements to examine drug trafficking as one of the continent's most efficient economies. More than a dozen artists from Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Mexico, and the United States look at what that trade leaves behind: grief, addiction, criminalization, migration, the cult of power, and the forms of resistance that grow in its shadow.

📍 República de Cuba 16, Centro Histórico, CDMX · Wednesday to Sunday, 12–8 pm

🏛️ About Bellas Hartas
Opened in June 2025, Bellas Hartas is an LGBTQ+ cultural center that treats art as a form of resistance and joy. Through its gallery, storefront windows, and a mural wall, it runs a year-round program of exhibitions that, in its own words, does not seek to decorate or soften q***r identities, but to amplify them.

✨ If you're in CDMX, see both shows, and follow and support Bellas Hartas. Independent spaces like this keep q***r memory visible. Gracias, Yolanda, for the walk and the introduction. 🙏

***rness ***rArt ***r

09/26/2026

📚 No visit to Mexico City is complete without a stop at EXIT, La Librería (EXIT La Librería).

For us, it is among the finest visual-arts bookstores in the Americas, and what makes the difference is its people. César welcomes us every time with warmth, generosity, and deep knowledge of new titles and their artists. He is the epitome of a librero, a vanishing vocation: someone who puts the right book in your hands and tells you why it matters. 🙌

This time, five new fotolibros came home with us to join the SoFLaFoto photobook collection:

📖 Los huesos del agua, Luis González Palma. A meditation on silence, absence, and chance, drawing on John Cage, Renaissance religious imagery, and nature.

📖 Francis Alÿs: The Historic Center of Mexico City (Turner/MACBA, 2006), with text by Carlos Monsiváis. Photographs, drawings, and notes gathered within a few blocks of Alÿs's studio: the city seen on foot.

📖 Hartas (RM, 2022), Pablo Ortiz Monasterio. Black-and-white portraits of women in Buenos Aires, 2016–2018, as the feminist movement gained momentum across the region, with a text by Inés Ulanovsky.

📖 Cucurrucucú (RM, 2016), Cristina de Middel. Archival news photographs paired with drawings and ranchera lyrics, questioning how violence is pictured and consumed.

📖 Gauchito Querido (RM), Amparo Baquerizas. A photographic pilgrimage across Argentina following devotion to Gauchito Gil, the folk saint, through roadside altars and sanctuaries on the way to Mercedes, Corrientes.

🏛️ About EXIT, La Librería
Founded in 2013 by curator and critic Rosa Olivares, editor of EXIT magazine, the bookstore on Río Pánuco, in Colonia Cuauhtémoc, specializes in contemporary art: photobooks, catalogs, theory, essays, and magazines from 200+ publishers.

Gracias, César, and the EXIT team. Next time you're in CDMX, stop by and ask for a recommendation. ✨

09/26/2026

📍 Mexico City | Hipervínculos: Alejandro Cartagena 2005–2026

Last February we were at Patricia Conde Galería () for the presentation of Ground Rules, 's first comprehensive monograph (Aperture, 2025). Seven months later, we're back for his retrospective.

The road here ran through Los Angeles. On September 1, the Getty () opened Instante/revelación: Moments in Mexican Photography alongside Every Minute Is History: Five Views of Los Angeles, rooted in Chicano/a LA from the 1960s to the '90s. Mexico and its diaspora, on facing walls. Then Mexico City, for Fotoseptiembre, Centro de la Imagen's () annual festival, and Cartagena's retrospective on view.

🔗 About the exhibition
Hipervínculos spans two decades of work by one of the most restless Mexican photographers of what he calls "the generation of doubt": heirs to the 20th-century documentary tradition who chose to question its certainties rather than perpetuate them. From Suburbia Mexicana, Carpoolers and Rivers of Power to recent work with historical archives and AI, Cartagena examines the urban, labor and border structures shaping Mexico today, treating the photograph with suspicion: not a record of the real, but a device that builds stories.

That suspicion becomes method: accumulation and repetition as ways of knowing. Moving from analog to digital, through the photobook and into AI-generated images, the show argues that to photograph today is not to capture the world, but to question how we have learned to see it.

📷 About Alejandro Cartagena
Born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (1977), Cartagena has lived and worked in Monterrey since age 13. His work on sprawl, labor, and the border is held by SFMOMA and the MFA Houston; he was shortlisted for the 2021 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize. SFMOMA opened Ground Rules, his first retrospective, in 2025.

🗓️ Through January 16, 2027 · Patricia Conde Galería, CDMX. Worth the trip.

09/12/2026

Shanah Tovah — wishing a sweet and joyful new year to everyone celebrating. 🍯🍎

📷 Damaris Betancourt (.betancourt), from Los judíos de Cuba / The Jews of Cuba

In the spring of 2000, Betancourt approached Cuba's Hebrew community and had the fortune to photograph some of its members. In her own words: “Even then only a few remained; today, many are no longer with us.” On this holiday, we share one frame from that encounter — a well-worn keepsake, kept in a Cuban home.

More of her work: https://damarisbetancourt.com/project/los-judios-de-cuba-die-juden-von-cuba-the-jews-of-cuba/

About the artist — Damaris Betancourt
Born in Havana, Cuba, in 1970, Damaris Betancourt studied law at the University of Havana before turning to journalism and, unable to pursue that path without Communist Youth League membership, found her way into photography, working alongside Swiss documentarians. She has lived and worked in Zurich, Switzerland, since the early 1990s. Her editorial, corporate, and architectural photography has appeared in NZZ am Sonntag, El País Semanal, and Cubanet, and she has published five books, including Träume und Traktanden (2000) and Diez días en Mazorra (2021). Her work has been exhibited in Zurich, Miami, Mexico City, Venice, and Washington, D.C., with support from the UBS Cultural Foundation and the Markant Foundation. She has been a member of the Purple Eye collective since 2025.

Los judíos de Cuba / The Jews of Cuba was photographed in the spring of 2000. As Betancourt writes in her own statement on the project, only a few members of Cuba's Hebrew community remained even then, and many more have since passed. The series includes the Canetti and Marichal Maya families, Hebrew school classes at the Gran Sinagoga Bet Shalom, the Guanabacoa Jewish cemeteries, and the island's only kosher butcher.