Sofia grew up in Nassau, Bahamas. Her father is Bahamian (Austrian parents) and her mother is Uruguayan. She went away to school in Austria at 14 years old, then attended high school in Uruguay, college in New York City and finally finished her bachelors in Business and Marketing in Montevideo, Uruguay. Sofia returned home in 2015 and currently works in the family business. 

Sofia has always had a love for photography, her father took a lot of photos his whole life and documented all the important moments in their family.  She got her first camera when she was 8, often borrowed her older sister’s camera and has always been the person at the party that took pictures of her friends. 

Sofia completed various short photography courses in New York City, Montevideo and Vienna but believes that experimentation and self expression is the most important part of photography.

Sofia loves yoga, art and people and hopes that through her photography people can get closer to their own humanity and soul. 

Project Bahama Mama was a two year long journey which began in November 2015. This coffee table book shines a light on the more authentic Bahamas through the portraits and wisdom from the mothers that hold the country together.  The project has taken Sofia through the majority of the islands of the Bahamas, a journey that she states “she needed to make”. It has made her love the people of her country all the more and want to show the rest of the world just how amazing it is.

A professional photographer since the age of fifteen, Roland Rose obtained his first camera when he was only twelve years old and used it to photograph the delights of Hog Island (now Paradise Island) when it truly was an underdeveloped paradise. He has travelled extensively, often to pursue his interest in food, wine, and classical music, but photography has been Roland’s passion and life’s work.

Born in Italy to British parents, Roland has lived in The Bahamas since 1946. Before establishing his own practice, he worked for some thirty-two years for the Development Board (later to become the Ministry of Tourism), when his lens was directed at visitors, touristic sites, and pretty views designed to please and attract visitors. During this time, he also took photographs of island life that piqued his interest or caught his artistic, albeit self-trained, eye.

Hanging precariously from a tree, a fence or a roof, jumping from a boat, or in the air, he sought the unusual angle or different view that gave his photographs special interest. He moved happily from the dark-room to the world of digital photography and Photoshop™, regularly upgrading his equipment to include the latest, most powerful cameras and lenses with their ever-expanding pixel count and improved image quality.

As a photographer, Roland has expressed his joy in the beauty that he has found here in The Bahamas, both in its people and its natural environment.

A professional photographer since the age of fifteen, Roland Rose obtained his first camera when he was only twelve years old and used it to photograph the delights of Hog Island (now Paradise Island) when it truly was an underdeveloped paradise. He has travelled extensively, often to pursue his interest in food, wine, and classical music, but photography has been Roland’s passion and life’s work.

Born in Italy to British parents, Roland has lived in The Bahamas since 1946. Before establishing his own practice, he worked for some thirty-two years for the Development Board (later to become the Ministry of Tourism), when his lens was directed at visitors, touristic sites, and pretty views designed to please and attract visitors. During this time, he also took photographs of island life that piqued his interest or caught his artistic, albeit self-trained, eye.

Hanging precariously from a tree, a fence or a roof, jumping from a boat, or in the air, he sought the unusual angle or different view that gave his photographs special interest. He moved happily from the dark-room to the world of digital photography and Photoshop™, regularly upgrading his equipment to include the latest, most powerful cameras and lenses with their ever-expanding pixel count and improved image quality.

As a photographer, Roland has expressed his joy in the beauty that he has found here in The Bahamas, both in its people and its natural environment.

In high school I gained an appreciation for photography as an art form while learning the intricacies of the field; rolling, shooting, and developing my own black and white film, preparing prints for a weekly class critique. After graduating from college I moved to Alaska for a summer job and ended up staying for almost 7 years. I spent winter months of each year traveling and volunteering throughout Latin America. As a solo traveller I used my camera as a tool to connect and share with people along the way, telling stories of lives different than mine. In 2008 I spent a year living in Palermo, Sicily and decided to get serious about photography as a career. Afterwards I published four images with National Geographic including its “Life in Color” book and series in 2009. A portfolio of images from Sicily titled “Sicilia Bellina” was also published in Descant Magazine in 2011. After a short stint at an office job with a travel company,

I decided to work independently as a freelance photographer shooting weddings while working with clients such as Harvard University, McKinsey and Company, Mystic River Watershed Association, and Southwest Center for HIV/AIDS. In 2012 I was offered a job at The Island School, a non-profit organization on a remote island in The Bahamas. I jumped at the opportunity at doing more purposeful work. I was put in charge of telling the stories of scientists, educators, sustainability specialists, and students. There I captured images of educational hands-on experiences involving scuba diving, field research, renewable energy production, and survival kayak trips.

I now work as a freelance photographer and stay-at-home father based in Nassau, The Bahamas. I am now accepted as a representative of Junkanoo media with the Bahamas Ministry of Culture and a contributing photographer of The Bahamian Project.

Delton Barrett grew up in The Bahamas as a child completing his last year in school from C.R. Walker Senior High in 2008 where he found his interest in art. After leaving school he began spending his time painting sceneries from old magazines of The Bahamas.
Barrett’s ultimate goal is to reflect himself within the landscape that surrounds him; to mirror his masculinity within the foliage that he blends his body into. He asserts his oneness with the roots of trees that stretch far underground. His intentional placement within the untouched landscape communicates a need to be seen deeply, intrinsically apart of the land in a way that brings to the forefront the question of his own freedom – his body, like the land once colonized, now a prop for rebellion against the colonial gaze.

Jonathan Bethel was born in Nassau, Bahamas on November 1st, 1978.  He attended St. Andrew’s School there for thirteen years, graduating in 1996.  He then went on to Clemson University in South Carolina. There he studied art and graduated in May of 2001 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts.
 
Even at an early age, Jonathan displayed a strong interest and aptitude for art, particularly drawing.  He would recreate anything he could get his hands on, from album covers to basketball cards.  He also loved to invent his own cartoon characters, creating sketch after sketch of them.  As a child, he participated in and won several art competitions.  In school also he stood out with his abilities in the art field.  He always took the art projects he was doing very seriously, and spent great time on them, sometimes even to his teacher’s disdain.  It was probably always evident that his future would involve art in some form.
 
But it was while at college in South Carolina, away from home for the first time, that Jonathan really developed his appreciation and love for the beauty of the Bahamas.  As the clichéd quote goes, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”  So he decided to put that passion into his work.  He devoted much of his painting studies there to capturing Bahamian scenery on the canvas.  Most of his work at that time was done completely from his head, and was in part an attempt to feel closer to home.
 
To this day, Jonathan’s desire to recreate the Bahamas on canvas remains, and he has learned that it takes many years to perfect.  Today his paintings realistically capture the majesty and character of Bahamian life and scenery.  Using acrylic paint as his medium, he explores a wide array of subjects, such as historic Bahamian homes and landmarks, colourful native plants, and of course the luminous waters of the Bahamas.
 
In 2001, Jonathan received first prize in the Eighteenth Annual Central Bank of the Bahamas Art Competition (the most prestigious local competition for young artists).  He has also participated in a number of group shows in Nassau and in the Family Islands, as well as several successful one-man shows. Jonathan’s artwork is in the private collections of many prominent Bahamians, and art collectors and enthusiasts around the world.  He was also done many small and large commissioned projects, including a series of five paintings for Bahamar’s renovation of the Sheraton Cable Beach in 2007.  In May of 2008, he was featured in the annual Bahamas edition of the popular Southern Boating magazine, including having one of his paintings on the cover. 

Gio Swaby is a mixed media artist whose practice encompasses installation, textiles, collage, performance, and video. Swaby was born and raised in Nassau, Bahamas where she obtained her Associate of Arts degree at The College of The Bahamas in 2012. In 2014, she moved to Vancouver, British Columbia to pursue a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree majoring in Film, Video and Integrated Media at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Swaby completed the program in 2016 and is currently based in Vancouver.

Melissa Alcena is a portrait and documentary photographer born in 1988 in Nassau, Bahamas. She attended Lyford Cay International School and graduated from St. Andrew’s International School in 2006. In 2010 she enrolled at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario, and completed a two year Applied Photography course in 2012. Alcena was invited to exhibit for her first solo show, “Some (re)assembly required” at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas in 2017 and in group shows at The Central Bank of The Bahamas for ‘The Bahamian Project’, ‘Diversions’ for The D’Agulair Art Foundation and most recently for The National Art Gallery’s NE9 ‘The Fruit and the Seed’ in 2018.

Kendal Hanna (born 1936, Nassau, The Bahamas) is one of the country’s earliest abstract expressionists.  In his early career,  Hanna worked figuratively,  but as he progressed,  his work became increasingly abstract and self-referential.  He characterizes his work as his “subconscious mind expressing itself on the canvas.”  Hanna went through a phase of painting using only black and white, but after treatment for illness, he began using color more extensively.  Today, he paints in both colour and black and white, and alternates between pure abstractionism and capturing subjects, often himself or close friends, in a more realistic style.   

Hanna always dreamed of being “trained in art” and left for New York City in early adulthood to study fine art, but had to return to Nassau to look after his ailing mother and was never able to realize his dream of attending art school.  Later, Hanna studied marine biology and then worked in the post office in Nassau.  During his breaks, he visited Nassau’s fabled Chelsea Pottery and soon became one of their first apprentices, along with Max Taylor and Brent Malone.  An avid reader of the art books found at the Pottery,  he learned about the work of European artists and was inspired to turn to painting. Hanna also met many visiting artists and sculptors who came to Nassau, among them Hildegard Hamilton and famous American muralist John St. John.  Hanna was influenced by their work and they encouraged him to pursue his art.   

His first exhibition was held in 1992 in Nassau and then at The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas,  a restored colonial mansion formerly known as the Villa Doyle.  Hanna remembers accompanying his mother to work and looking at the Villa Doyle opposite. “I would never realize that my paintings would be shown in this place, you know it’s sort of unbelievable,” he says about seeing his work hanging in the Gallery now.  Hanna had exhibitions at the new Providence Art and Antiques Gallery in 2005 and 2006, the second exhibit showing many of his self-portraits.  He moved into Popup Galleries in 2007 where he is still the artist in residence. In 2011, a major retrospective of his life’s work was shown at the NAGB.   In 2015, Hanna was selected to exhibit at Volta Art Fair in NYC.  A documentary, Brigidy Bram, tells the story of Hanna’s life and working processes.