Adama Delphine Fawundu

Adama Delphine Fawundu is a photographer and visual artist born in Brooklyn, NY to parents from Sierra Leone and Equatorial Guinea, West Africa. She received her Master of Fine Arts from Columbia University School of the Arts.

Ms. Fawundu has been documenting global hip-hop and urban youth culture for over twenty years. Her art re-imagines and glorifies the strength of African and Black diaspora culture and identities that continue to evolve, despite the social violence of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and colonialism.

Ms. Fawundu is a co-founder and author of the book and movement, MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora. She is currently an artist-in-resident at the Center for Book Arts in New York City. Her awards include the Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Award, a New York Foundation for the Arts Photography Grant, and the Brooklyn Arts Council Grant.

Ms. Fawundu’s works can be found in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Brooklyn Historical Society, the Norton Museum of Art, Corridor Art Gallery, Museum of Contemporary Art at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, and David C. Driskell Center for the Study of Visual Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora, University of Maryland.

The Authority Collective

The Authority Collective is a group of womxn, non-binary, and gender expansive people of color, reclaiming our authority in lens-based visual media. As professionals in the photography, film, and VR/AR industries, our mission is to empower artists with resources and community, and to take action against systemic and individual abuses, in the world of lens-based visual work. Our goal is to remove barriers to access for BIPOC entering editorial, journalism, documentary, commercial, and fine art careers.

The Authority Collective connects our community members with job, mentorship, networking, and professional development resources. We look to shift the power dynamic in traditional and independent media, so that the stories we tell, represent the true diversity of our world. We are establishing our power, to set standards that challenge colonial narratives, and the notions of success.