Since 2006, Karen Miranda Rivadeneira’s photographic projects have focused on identity and intimacy. With her family’s participation, she has staged and photographed memories of her childhood in her family’s home in Queens, New York. She has also worked with native peoples, such as the Mam in Guatemala, the Mandaeans (from south of Iraq and west of Iran) living in Sweden, and the Waoranis in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Most recently she has explored such ancient traditions as shamanism in the Andean Mountains. In these diverse locations she uses the medium of photography to locate the universal while exploring the intersection of memory and tradition.
Miranda Rivadeneira earned her BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York. She is the recipient of multiple awards and fellowships, including a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship in photography, the EnFoco New Works Award, and a grant from the Queens Council of the Arts. She has published and exhibited widely and is an invited participant in the 2014 Latin American Photography Forum in São Paulo, Brazil.
