ARTIST RESIDENCY
The Miami Photographic Observatory (MPhO)
The Miami Photographic Observatory. An Aluna Art Foundation Project
Mapping the City. Archiving the Future.
Founded in June 2025 at the Tower Art Center in Little Havana, the Miami Photographic Observatory (MPhO) is conceived as an artist residency and a platform dedicated to the study—through image-based practices—of urban transformation and the qualification of vital space in the city of Miami today.Photographers, filmmakers, and visual artists—both local and international—will be provided with a studio/gallery space equipped to support the development of projects commissioned by Aluna Curatorial Collective, as well as to exhibit, during their residency, both prior work and new material produced on site.
MPhO residents will map diverse sectors of the city of Miami, generating updated visual archives that will be presented across artistic and educational platforms. These archives will serve simultaneously as research tools and as an interactive field of dialogue between image-making and theoretical inquiry.
The results of this multidisciplinary research will be gradually compiled and organized on the MPhO website. The mappings produced by residents will be featured in thematic exhibitions held at Aluna Art Foundation’s space in Little Havana, as well as in other cultural institutions. Over time, the Miami Photographic Observatory aims to become a key visual and theoretical platform for the study of the city’s heritage and for understanding its transformations in the early decades of the 21st century.
MPhO welcomes photographers, moving image artists, and other practitioners whose work engages—through diverse technical approaches—with photographic devices or with image-making processes derived from alternative methods of fixation and reproduction.
The Miami Photographic Observatory is a cultural initiative of Aluna Art Foundation, directed by curators Adriana Herrera and Willy Castellanos, members of Aluna Curatorial Collective, the entity responsible for the selection of resident artists.
