Delana Delgado (b.1990) is a Puerto Rican film photographer, event organizer, and arts administrator born and raised in San Diego, California. Delgado has been an active and long-time advocate for arts accessibility and de-colonizing initiatives in the San Diego/Baja Region since 2016. Graduating from SDSU in 2020 with a BFA Anthropology, she originally had planned to begin her career under her major, but due to the pandemic, leaned into her lifetime hobby of film photography. Delgado found that through applying her Anthropological background to her photos, she is better able to authentically share the stories of her subjects, her culture, and her community through her photography.

Delana is the founder and creative director of ethnographic photo project ‘Around the Way Girls’, and the conceptualization of creative collective ‘619 Girls’. She has explored employment with The Hill Street Country Club as a curatorial assistant and program coordinator, The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego La Jolla as a marketing intern, and with The AjA Project as a teaching artist.  Her work has been featured by The Museum of Photographic Arts San Diego, The California Endowment of the Arts, The Museum of Contemporary Arts San Diego, and throughout gallery art shows in San Diego and Los Angeles.

AROUND THE WAY GIRL, Delgado’s most recent solo exhibition curated by Dinah Poellnitz and presented by the NTC Foundation, was highlighted for her documentary-style photos by local news media outlets such as KUSI + CBS news, as well as the show’s exploration of Black and Latine femininity, womanhood, and community in 35mm photography and collage. The exhibition represents a small selection from an ongoing series that has grown out of a years-long journey of reconnecting to her own body, gender expression, and culture.