How one woman is putting the spotlight on her Latin American photo peers
A look at Verónica Sanchis Bencomo and Foto Féminas
Adapted from a story by The Washington Post’s Olivier Laurent.
Photographer Verónica Sanchis Bencomo was tired of seeing foreigners document Latin America. When news breaks, photographers parachute in. Some have even made the continent their home.
And too often, those photographers were men.
In 2015, Sanchis Bencomo decided to change that. She launched Foto Féminas, an online platform that promotes female photographers in Latin America and the Caribbean. To date, Foto Féminas has featured 36 photographers from 14 different countries.
“In each feature I select one photographer, one body of work,” Sanchis Bencomo says. “I also conduct an artist conversation over Skype, in the hope the photographer can provide more details about her works.”
Sanchis Bencomo sees her role as promoting coverage of underrepresented communities, but also contributing to a better understanding of our world and breaking stereotypes.
“I think it is vital to learn about local female photographers, whose personal works are not easily found in the mainstream media,” she says. “They often spend longer periods of time with their subjects and stories and, so, are able to provide insights not seen from outsiders and different even to what their local male counterparts would get.”
After three years, Foto Féminas has branched out of the online world. It has put on shows at photography festivals in Guatemala, Ecuador, Argentina and even China, and the organization hopes to publish a book as well. But for Sanchis Bencomo, discovering new bodies of work, such as Joana Toro’s “Hello I am Hello Kitty” or Paola Paredes’s “Unveiled,” remains the central focus.
