MphO announces the opening of its third residency with “The Feeling + Positive Project”
Miami, November 29th, 2025
Art Basel Week | Aluna Art Foundation announces the opening of the third residency of its project, the Miami Photographic Observatory (MphO), with “The Feeling + Positive Project”, an exhibition by artists Juan Carlos Alom and Geandy Pavón. With the support of the Miami–Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, the Cultural Affairs Council, the Mayor, and the Miami–Dade County Board of County Commissioners.
At the heart of Little Havana—on the pedestrian crossroads where 15th Avenue meets 8th Street—Alom and Pavón will spend several days capturing the faces of residents and wandering travelers alike. Their work will unfold as a living chronicle of the neighborhood’s socio-cultural and human fabric, created with a singular analog device that is both camera and darkroom, a crafted instrument born from their own hands.
According to the artists, the project “rescues and recontextualizes the once-popular tradition of the ‘Minutera Camera’—known in Latin America as the ‘Cámara de Cajón’ (Box Camera) or ‘Cuban Polaroid,’ and in Central Asia as the ‘Afghan Camera.’ Once common in public squares in Havana or Kabul, this practice now survives only at the margins, as nostalgic curiosity or tourist attraction. (…) What is new in the Feeling + Positive Project is not the reproduction practice but its reconceptualization through the lens of contemporary art. It reclaims what is perhaps the humblest of photographic practices—a craft of the public square, precarious in its materials and simple in its mechanics—and restores to it dignity and symbolic complexity. Our practice seeks to expand that horizon, proposing a new vision of the photographic that unites technical archaeology, social performance, visual poetry, and political critique.”
The exhibition at the MPhO studio/residency will bring together several archives from these two long-established photographers and artists. The duo will present the images from the Feeling + Positive Project (originally conceived in New York City), along with Geandy Pavón’s “Superheroes” series and a selection of photographs by Juan Carlos Alom. We invite the community to take part in the Feeling + Positive Project – Little Havana Edition. In the coming days, we will announce the schedule during which the team will be photographing on 15th Avenue and in the park adjacent to the Miami Beach Convention Center throughout the days of Art Basel. We encourage residents, visitors, and anyone interested in participating in this collaborative portrait project to join us and become part of this living visual archive.
The Miami Photographic Observatory | Studio/Residency. 1444 SW 7th Street, Miami, FL 33135
About the artists
Juan Carlos Alom (Havana, Cuba, 1964) is an experimental filmmaker and photographer whose work has been exhibited in Cuba, the Americas, Europe, and South Africa. He began his career as a photojournalist in Cuba during the 1990s, developing an artistic vision shaped by the spontaneity and urgency demanded by that period of crisis.In 2000, Time magazine selected him as one of the 100 Latin American photographers of the millennium. His photographic work is included in the permanent collections of the National Museum of Fine Arts of Cuba; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); the Ludwig Forum for International Art (Germany); the Fototeca de Pachuca (Mexico); the PANN Museum; the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas; Tate Modern (United Kingdom); and the Frost Museum (Florida, USA).
Geandy Pavón (Havana, Cuba, 1974) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work examines the pathologies of power and the sociopolitical conditions shaped by totalitarianism. Working across photography, video, and painting, Pavón constructs a body of work that navigates the intersection of political critique, historical memory, and the poetics of the image. In 2020, Pavón was awarded the CINTAS Fellowship in Visual Arts for his series Quarantine: 40 Days and 40 Nights, created during the recession sparked by the Covid-19 pandemic—one of the most significant recognitions granted to artists of Cuban origin.
