Yolanda Andrade has dedicated her life to exploring the popular culture of her native Mexico by covering topics such as death, feminism, social and political events, religion, and sexual diversity. Her wandering gaze is very well-trained in the handling of the unusual, the unexpected, and the marginalized. She is a woman who doesn’t fear getting deeper into the crowd, becoming an artist from the crowd. That was how she started to document Gay Pride Parades in Mexico City from practically its beginning. She acknowledged that she could not attend the first parade celebrated in 1978. But she did attend the second and subsequent parades and events where the LGBTQ+ community has taken to the streets its fights for social equality. Yolanda’s passion through the years to give visibility to the LGBTQ+ community in Mexico and their struggles has gained her the recognition of being “The Mexican Photographer of the Sexual Diversity.”

Yolanda Andrade (Villahermosa, Tabasco, Mexico, 1950) is a Mexican photographer and feminist artist. She currently resides and works in Mexico City. From 1976 to 1977 she studied photography at the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY. She received the Guggenheim fellowship to create a photography project about Mexico City. Andrade is most known for capturing what she describes as the “Mexican Passion.” Through the years, she has documented the life of the LGBTQ+ community in Mexico. In 2024 she received the Medalla de Oro de Bellas Artes (Golden Medal of Fine Arts) awarded by the Mexican National Institute of Fine Arts.