The Woman Behind The Freedom Tower’s ‘Voices of Miami’ Photographs

“Voices of Miami” is a permanent exhibition inside the newly restored and reopened Freedom Tower at Miami Dade College on Biscayne Boulevard. (Photo courtesy of Miami Dade College)

Clara Toro began her quest to create a photographic archive of immigrants and the Miami neighborhoods like Allapattah, Wynwood, and Little Haiti before they disappeared due to gentrification.

It was those stories in pictures that got her noticed and commissioned, in a sense, as the photographic historian for “Voices of Miami,” a permanent exhibition in the recently reopened, restored Freedom Tower at Miami Dade College

The photos are a companion to the community-driven oral history project, led by the Museum of Art and Design (MOAD), the museum of Miami Dade College, in partnership with the MDC Archives.

Clara Toro photographing her subjects for the “Voices of Miami” permanent exhibition at the Freedom Tower. (Photo courtesy of Miami Dade College)

The Freedom Tower Oral History Archive captured the voices that helped to tell the story of the historic landmark, which originally served as the headquarters for the Miami News daily newspaper and later as a processing center for more than 650,000 Cuban exiles.

Toro’s subjects are from all walks of life and they were selected from those who participated in the oral history project. There are 350 black and white photographs in the “Voices of Miami” exhibition.

She wanted to have her subjects be the focus, so she grabbed with what she said is her “favorite Leica camera” paired with a 90 mm lens, and got to work.

The photos are all black and white. “I wanted the photographs to be timeless and I felt with color it would add a sense of the time when they were made and didn’t want that.” But there was another thought Toro said she had when deciding how to portray the people. The idea of an identity card or passport photo came to mind.

“I think that is something that is very important about the immigrant (experience) – it is the passport photo or the photo that is taken for any sort of identity card. I wanted to make a commentary about those photos – the ones with the white background that do not specialize. They just identify us as immigrants, right?”

She said when she first began the project she had a vision that each portrait would be somewhat serious. “I would tell people not to smile because I wanted something more sober. And then I realized that I was not honoring their beautiful spirit. After the first 10 portraits, I realized it was very important for people to smile. Many of them had asked me if they could.”

Miami Dade College commissioned Clara Toro to take all of the photos for “Voices of Miami” permanent exhibition inside the newly restored and reopened Freedom Tower on Biscayne Boulevard. The subjects were selected from the community Oral History Project. (Photo courtesy of Miami Dade College)

She also wanted her photos to be kept simple. “I didn’t want people to arrive dressed up,” said Toro. “I think the photos are honest. I wanted for people to look at them and be curious and wonder about the subjects, what was going through their minds, what were their dreams or their fears. In some of them, you see a little bit of fear. In some of them, you see joy. You see pride. Different emotions from different people. And I hope I was able to convey that.”

The focus would be on her subjects, plain backgrounds, and not on anything else. She would tell the people she was going to photograph that it would just be them in the picture. But one time she had to make an exception.

One woman brought something that she merely wanted to share with Toro.

“This one lady came in with a tiny, tiny little dress that her mother had made. She said she wanted to show it to me. And the fabric, the fabric was really beautiful. It looked, of course, old and yellow and worn. But it was hers. And she told me that she had worn that dress when she arrived to the States. And that her mother had saved it.”

Toro shared that she doesn’t like to photograph people with any sort of objects. But in this case, she said, she had to.

There is only one photo where someone is holding an object in “Voices of Miami,” a dress made by a mother that the small girl wore when she came to the States. (Photo courtesy of Miami Dade College)

“It was so very touching — the way she held it and the story behind it, how her mother had made it, and her mother no longer being alive. So I broke the rule and it might be the only photograph(in ‘Voices of Miami’) that has an object. But sometimes you just gotta roll,” she said.

Toro didn’t start her career as a photographer. She said that came later in life.

Born in Medellin, Colombia, she studied industrial design there. “Then the 1980s happened. I left Colombia.” She said she remembers it being “all Pablo Escobar and bombs and people dead on the street. It was very violent. So, my parents told me I should go because it was so dangerous.”

She applied and got a scholarship to the University of Montreal and there received a master’s degree in industrial design and marketing. She married while in Montrela and moved to New York and then came to Miami.

“I decided I wanted to raise my kids, so I became an art teacher in an elementary school for 15 years.” At a Montessori school in Key Biscayne ,she taught art, then second and third grade.

When she turned 50 and her kids had grown, she decided to go back to “her passion,” which was photography. “Being a photographer when I was in Colombia was not going to be an accepted profession for my parents So, I thought to myself, ‘I am 50 now, I paid my dues.’”

Photographer Clara Toro has been documenting Miami neighborhoods that she believes will eventually disappear due to gentrification. (Photo courtesy of Clara Toro)

She took some photography courses and then went on to to get a master’s degree from PhotoEspaña.

“At my age, I knew it would be difficult to get a job as a documentary photographer,” she said, adding that there was a stint as a freelance photographer for the Wall Street journal.”

Now 60, she has spent time on a personal body of work and continues her longtime project of preserving in photography the people and places of Miami’s neighborhoods. She has been a resident artist at the Bakehouse Art Complex since 2018.

Toro feels like there’s more to continue, though, in the “Voices of Miami” project.

Clara Toro wanted her photos to focus only on the subjects and all of the photos are in black and white. (Photo courtesy of Miami Dade College)

“We have over 300, but I am hoping that we continue,” said Toro, since the oral history project continues to grow. “There hasn’t been a single day when I say I’m done. I guess by nature, I’m a storyteller, and I learned a lot and I enjoyed all of the stories about the people I photographed.”

WHAT: Freedom Tower at Miami Dade College

WHERE: 600 Biscayne Blvd., Miami

COST: $18 general admission, $17, children ages 7 to 18; $14, students and seniors over 62 years old with ID. Miami Dade College students and employees free.

INFORMATION: moadmdc.org/freedom-tower/

MORE INFORMATION: Share Your History Story

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