Remaking Miami: Josefina Tarafa’s Photographs of the 1970s
Monday, 09/18/2023-12/13/2023, 10:00 am-03:00 pm
Miami Dade College Eduardo J Padron Campus, Building 3, Room 3113
627 SW 27th Avenue,
Miami, Florida, 33135
Website
Cost: Free

During the 1970s, the photographer, editor, and philanthropist, Josefina Tarafa (born Havana, Cuba, 1907–died Miami, Florida, 1982) created an exceptional body of images that picture Miami transformed by the arrival of her fellow Cuban immigrants. The first exhibition dedicated to Tarafa’s photography, Remaking Miami includes thirty posthumous prints, made from photographs in an archive of approximately one hundred and fifty original images, now held by the Lydia Cabrera Papers at the Cuban Heritage Collection of the University of Miami Libraries.

In Cuba during the 1940s and 1950s, Tarafa worked as a documentarian, exploring national identity by photographing the architecture of nineteenth-century sugar mills and, in the company of her close friend, the anthropologist Lydia Cabera, Afro-Cuban religious rituals. Exiled, Tarafa continued her visual investigation of lo cubano (Cubanness) in Miami. By the early 1970s, the Cuban community comprised a majority of Miami’s immigrants.

Gallery hours at the Eduardo J. Padrón Campus are 10:00 AM–3:00 PM, Monday–Wednesday, and the second Saturday of every month. The exhibition is free and open to the public. For tours or any special visitor needs, please call (305) 237-7700 during museum hours or email moadinfo@mdc.edu.

Image: Josefina Tarafa, View of El Oso Blanco Supermarket, W. Flagler Street near 12th Avenue, Miami, Florida, 1971. Lydia Cabrera Papers, Cuban Heritage Collection, University of Miami Libraries, Coral Gables, Florida.