Monica Rojas is a social documentary photographer based in Northeast Ohio whose work centers on the people, places, and traditions that shape communal identity.

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She has photographed across Cuba, Angola, Mexico, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Penang — drawn to communities where daily life and tradition are inseparable. Those in bold were not destinations but home, giving her work an intimacy that comes from being embedded rather than passing through. 

 

Monica's work has been published in Elegant Island Living Magazine, where she earned the cover and an eight-page interior spread, and The Foreign Service Journal, and has been exhibited at the U.S. Consulate Nogales' Building Puentes Across Naciones. ​While living in Nogales, she documented the US-Mexico border from both sides — including rare access to the tunnels beneath the border alongside Border Patrol and the Policía Federal, as well as an aerial survey by helicopter.

 

Her current project, George Town with Miles: A Cat's Guide to Penang's Most Colorful City, is a children's photo book celebrating the spirit and culture of George Town, Penang's UNESCO World Heritage Site. She is also developing a long-form documentary book on the Clan Jetties of Penang — one of the last surviving waterfront communities of its kind in Southeast Asia — bringing focused attention to a heritage that has received little dedicated documentation.