About SOFIA

SOFIA began as a women’s photography collective. Its mission became to inspire, educate and connect women working in photography. 

The Beginning

SOFIA began in the early summer of 2014.

We wanted a community for women working in photography. We wanted to start a collective. Which was great — except we didn't know what a collective would look like. What did it mean to be a collective? What would we do?

We enjoyed our work as commercial photographers. It was hard work but great to make a living through the art of transforming ideas into images. We liked what we did. But: the seeds for a lot of our work originated with our clients.

We wanted to return to what first drew us to photography. We wanted to deepen our sense of personal connection with the work we were making. We wanted to challenge ourselves. And we wanted to do it with other women.

The Women Who Started SOFIA

SOFIA Presents BAD BEHAVIOUR

In 2016, SOFIA had its official debut at the 20th annual CONTACT Photography Festival in Toronto, featuring work that each member created over the two years that lead up to the exhibition.

PRESS

SOFIA was featured in CBC Arts, The Fader, Applied Arts Magazine, Ryerson Review of Journalism, and The Toronto Star.

INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATIONS

SOFIA went on to show work internationally in collaboration with Foto Féminas, a platform for women photographers working in Latin America and in the Caribbean.

Above: Photos from a slideshow event featuring SOFIA and images from the Bad Behaviour exhibition in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in March 2017.

MENTORSHIP

In 2017, SOFIA launched a mentorship program.

For one year, participating members of SOFIA worked with 11 emerging women photographers.

The goal was to offer support and guidance in whatever area the participant expressed a desire for, as well as help them to discover and evolve their voice as a photographer and creator.

The program was open to emerging women photographers worldwide and included participants in Canada, the USA, and France.

BOUNDLESS LOVE

As part of the 2018 CONTACT Photography Festival and in collaboration with the Bad Girls Collective, SOFIA mounted a pop-up exhibition entitled, “Boundless Love”.

2014-2018

In those four years, I’ve had four addresses, in three different cities, across two countries. And that’s just my story.

A lot happened for every one of us in that time. Together, we saw marriages begin while others ended. There were several “new country” moves. Big life changes occurred alongside the everyday things. We all worked many long days in our attempts to continue delivering amazing work for our clients while also creating time and space for our own. Through it all, we supported each other and we pushed each other. We were both catalysts and witnesses to each other’s transformations.

As beautiful as it all was, it was also a lot of work. Coordinating the mercurial schedules of 8 busy women — all living, traveling and/or working in multiple time zones — was an ever-present challenge. While it was incredibly rewarding to mount edge-pushing exhibitions and develop initiatives like the mentorship program, it also required a lot of time, energy and commitment.

So, at the end of 2018, after four beautiful years: I made the difficult decision to step away from SOFIA.

Being a part of this collective, working so closely with such creative and ambitious women, all of us sharing in our common goals — this was life-changing.

I am and will always be proud of the work that SOFIA did and of what we were able to create together. I feel deeply thankful for all that I have learned from this experience and from the women of SOFIA, who were so generous with their time, love and energy.

To the women of SOFIA, thank you for having me. It has been a pleasure and a privilege.