Announcing the the Abigail Cohen Fellowship in Documentary Photography
By Peng Ke, from her project “Underneath the Tree Where I Buried My Childhood Pets.”
In 2014, ChinaFile and the Magnum Foundation partnered to found the Abigail Cohen Fellowship in Documentary Photography, a fellowship supported by Betsy Z. and Edward E. Cohen and named in memory of their daughter.
Over the years, we’ve supported six photographers to produce independent work in China. Through a nomination process, two more photographers have been awarded the fellowship this year. They are Peng Ke and Cheng Xinhao, both from China.
This year’s jury was comprised of Kristen Lubben, Executive Director of Magnum Foundation; Emma Raynes, Director of Programs at Magnum Foundation; Susan Jakes, Editor of ChinaFile; Muyi Xiao, Director of Visuals for ChinaFile; and David Barreda, Deputy Editor of Photo and Visuals at Topic.
“We were excited to see the range of topics and photographic approaches for this year’s Abigail Cohen Fellowship. More than in past years, we are seeing documentary photographers experiment with form and content in creative ways,” says Emma Raynes.
By Peng Ke, from her project “Underneath the Tree Where I Buried My Childhood Pets.”
Born in Changsha, Hunan province, Peng Ke moved with her parents to Shenzhen as a young child. She is interested in how urbanization and migration affect the human psyche, particularly in young children. Through her photography, Peng seeks to understand how migrant children growing up in unfamiliar cities approach their surroundings, and how they come to know unfamiliar and chaotic worlds through play.
The Mang resting under the azalea. By Cheng Xinhao, from his project “Beyond the Forest: The Mang Borderland.”
Cheng Xinhao, a native of Yunnan province, earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from Peking University and now works as an independent artist. He is in the midst of a second phase of an intensive 15-year study on the Mang, a tiny ethnic group who live along the China-Vietnam border. While the majority of Mang people live in Vietnam, some 800 live in China’s Yunnan province. Incorporating archeology, anthropology, and linguistics, Cheng’s photographic project will explore how the border between the two countries affects Mang identity.
SELECTED FOR THE RACIAL EQUITY IN THE ARTS INNOVATION LAB
Magnum Foundation is honored to participate in the Racial Equity in the Arts Innovation Lab, a yearlong training program to increase racial equity in the arts and culture sector. Alongside the Whitney Museum, Tribeca Film Institute, Lincoln Center, and other leading arts organizations, Magnum Foundation is one of sixty New York City arts and cultural organizations selected to participate in this groundbreaking program, led by Race Forward: The Center for Racial Justice Innovation and funded through The New York City Cultural Agenda Fund and The New York Community Trust.
“By equipping the diverse and influential group of arts organizations in our Lab with concrete institutional practices for racial equity, we hope to increase sector-wide readiness for racial justice and see material improvements in the ways that New Yorkers of color experience and access arts and culture in our city,” said Nayantara Sen, Culture and Content Project Manager for Race Forward.
Request for Proposals: Counter Histories, Alternative Narratives
Magnum Foundation fellow Christian Padron works with his family archive in a project documenting the Afro-Cuban American experience in New York. Photo by Liz Sanders..
In partnership with the Brown Institute for Media Innovation and the Fledgling Fund, Magnum Foundation will offer a two-day experimental laboratory for photographers, artists, academics, media professionals, and other practitioners using photography in their work.
In this lab, we will explore strategies for applying new digital tools to challenge the status quo, question official histories, disrupt power structures embedded in archives—and explore the radical possibility of alternative narratives.
Counter Histories, Alternative Narratives is part of Magnum Foundation’s Photography Expanded, an initiative that aims to expose documentary photographers to new tools and approaches, as well as encourage interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation in storytelling on social issues.
Dates
Applications due: Feb 15, 2018
Participants notified: March 15, 2018
Two-day laboratory: April 16–17, 2018
About the Lab
With guidance from creative technologists and designers, lab participants will develop their projects and explore emerging techniques for layering of story and experience and merging of real and digital worlds. Through demonstrations and hands-on exercises, participants will learn about augmented reality, mixed reality, geo-locative media, and other interactive and immersive technologies.
The laboratory is free for up to fifteen selected participants. For applicants based internationally or outside New York City, there will be opportunities to apply for travel funding.
Applications
Applicants for the lab should propose photography-based projects that activate archives, reframe histories, respond creatively to existing images, disrupt static structures of image collections, and/or bring layers of visual narratives into our contemporary experiences and environments. Proposed projects can be an ongoing or in an initial idea-stage for future work. There is no technical experience required to apply.
All are welcome to apply. We want to create a diverse group of participants for this laboratory. We especially encourage applications from individuals who are part of racial, gender, sexual, ethnic, or religious minority groups, and others whose authorship is unevenly represented within the field of documentary photography.
A list of guiding questions that may be helpful in crafting your proposal:
How can we engage with existing photographs to shift the frameworks of representation? What happens when we disassemble and re-appropriate colonial archives, newspaper archives, museum archives, or other existing collections? Can we play with shifting the meaning/s of an image as it transits across time and space, from past to the present, present to the future, from one geographic or temporal context to another?
How does an image’s meaning and reception change according to its environment or geographic position? Can the repositioning of an image create new productive tension around its meaning? What happens when images are positioned as layers on top of our lived environments?
Have you created a body of work in the past that would gain new meaning if it was re-situated? Re-contextualized? Remixed?
How can we look critically at the ways in which institutions, countries, cultures, religions and others bring order to collections of images? How can we creatively subvert “official” systems of archiving, classifying, and organizing?
How can we use strategies of gaming, participation, and interactivity to engage with social issues or promote social justice?
What if we engage with images that are not necessarily meant to be consumed as a typical documentary narrative; satellite imagery, forensic imagery, archaeological imagery, or other photographic sensory data that may be produced, collected, and organized by non-humans?
Can we imagine an archive of the future? Perhaps it’s a speculative archive that becomes a synthesis of the known and unknown and brings us new perspectives on our past? Or a radical imagining of a liberated future for those who feel the deepest impacts of systemic power imbalances?
For any questions, please contact Programs Associate Noelle Flores Théard
Photographer Daniel Castro Garcia started his _Foreigner_ project in reaction to the sensationalist photojournalism he saw dominating the media around the migrant crisis. “I did not believe in the simplistic, dramatic and provocative images I was seeing,” he explains. Daniel and his studio partner Thomas Saxby therefore stationed themselves in southern Italy to document the events in their own way, which we featured "here":https://www.itsnicethat.com/features/john-radcliffe-studio-migrant-crisis-foreigner-designer-thomas-saxby-and-photographer-daniel-castro-garcia-280416 in April 2016.
Women Photograph: Daniella Zalcman in Conversation with Susan Meiselas
Please join us for a conversation with Susan Meiselas and Daniella Zalcman about the shifting challenges and opportunities for women in photography.
Susan is a photographer, educator, and president of the Magnum Foundation. Daniella is the recipient of the 2016 Inge Morath Award and founder of Women Photograph, an initiative launched this year.
An honor to have our space filled with such wisdom and vibrancy. Thank you, @kameelahr and @marilyn.nance! Your fascinating, thoughtful presentations and exchange provoked a powerful spirit of inquiry 💡What an evening! Photo by @gangitmo. (at Magnum Foundation)
The doors open at Photoville on Wednesday, September 13! We’re proud to be presenting “The Blood and the Rain” by grantees Yael Martínez and Orlando Velázquez. The artists will be onsite from their home of Guerrero, Mexico, where they’ve been exploring indigenous spiritual practices by merging photographs and traditional engraving-style drawings.
We’re so excited to also see a number of our other grantees and fellows, across all of our programs, represented at this year’s Photoville in containers, installations, and features! Keep your eyes out for:
Am I What You’re Looking For?
Featuring Magnum Foundation Fund grantee Endia Beal
China Through Chinese Eyes
Featuring Photography and Social Justice grantees Yuyang Liu and Zhou Na
Insider/Outsider
Featuring Burn Magazine Emerging Photographer Fund recipient Annie Flanagan, Inge Morath Awardee Danielle Villasana and finalist Gabriella Demczuk, Arab Documentary Photography Program grantee Tasneem Alsultan, and Magnum Foundation fellow Sara Hylton
The Millennium Villages Project
Featuring Photography and Social Justice Program mentor Ed Kashi and Magnum Foundation Fund grantee Danny Wilcox Frazier
Newest Americans
Featuring Photography and Social Justice Program mentor Ed Kashi
PDN’s 30 2017: Our Choice of New and Emerging Photographers to Watch
Featuring Arab Documentary Photography Program grantee Tasneem Alsultan, Photography and Social Justice fellows Xyza Bacani and Yuyang Liu, Magnum Foundation Fund grantee Yael Martínez, and Inge Morath Awardee Daniella Zalcman
UNEARTH
Featuring Photography and Social Justice fellow Yu Yu Myint Than
On view at Photoville
September 13–17 & 21–24
Brooklyn Bridge Park
Free and open to the public!
We’re pleased to present The Blood and the Rain at this year’s Photoville. The Blood and the Rain is a multimedia collaboration by brothers Yael Martínez (photographer) and Orlando Velázquez (graphic artist), produced as a part of our pilot program centered around interdisciplinary collaboration.
Inspired to seek connection with their roots and cultural history, Yael and Orlando sought out ancestral communities in their native Guerrero, Mexico. Over time, they were welcomed to experience long-held indigenous spiritual traditions and ceremonies. Because the rituals themselves are not allowed to be photographed, Yael and Orlando found ways of documenting and honoring the community’s cultural expressions without exposing or violating them. Combining photography with drawing, they have generated a new visual form that portrays the physical and metaphysical layers of the rituals and the relationships that exists between the people, their gods, and nature. More here.
ICP Projected: The Arab Documentary Photography Program
Jul 24, 2017 – Aug 6, 2017
A selection of images from the Arab Documentary Photography Program are projected onto ICP’s public facing windows in the evenings through August 6. The projections can be viewed from the street at 250 Bowery, New York, NY. This exhibition is part of ICP’s new ongoing series Projected.
The Arab Documentary Photography Program is a joint initiative between Magnum Foundation, the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture, and the Prince Claus Fund to support and amplify creative approaches to visual storytelling that challenge conventional narratives about the Arab region. The program values a range of creative approaches, from classical reportage to more conceptual frameworks, using the term documentary to ground projects in contemporary critical issues. Grantees are selected each year through an open call for applications and receive production support for long-term creative projects within a six-month individual mentorship program with Randa Shaath, Eric Gottesman, Tanya Habjouqa, and Peter van Agtmael. Over the course of their project development, grantees come together for two intensive workshops in Beirut, where they have the opportunity to connect in-person with their mentors and with program advisors Bertan Selim, Susan Meiselas, and Emma Raynes.
In its fourth year, the Arab Documentary Photography Program has supported projects by 36 photographers from 15 countries, which have been published and exhibited both regionally and internationally. A vibrant community is growing from this program, one that continues to be a safe place for experimentation and connectivity long after projects are completed.
About the Artists
• Arwa Alneami, Saudi Arabia. “Never Never Land” is a look into how women experience Saudi theme parks, where there exist stark dichotomies between fun and gender-specific restrictions.
• Tasneem Alsultan, Saudi Arabia. “Saudi Tales of Love” goes beyond the surface of elaborate wedding ceremonies to explore the complexities of marriage, following the stories of young brides, widows, and divorcées, as well as women that are happily married.
• Mostafa Bassim, Egypt. “Revolution of the Mind” shows the influence of state control on Egyptian society by telling the stories of seven progressive young men who have been victims of civilian-led smear campaigns, community surveillance, and random acts of violence.
• Zied Ben Romdhane, Tunisia. “West of Life” illustrates the landscapes and day-to-day in a phosphate mining region in the southwest of Tunisia, a place rich in resources but disenfranchised by the government.
• Nadia Bseiso, Jordan. “Infertile Crescent” follows the route of a controversial 180 km water pipeline being built between Jordan, Palestine, and Israel, documenting the historic, environmental, and domestic sites that lay in its path.
• Sima Diab, Egypt. “She as He” follows the story of Nadia, who dresses as a boy to enjoy the freedom in public afforded to men in Egypt.
• Hicham Gardaf, Morocco. “Intersections” explores the ways in which Morocco’s identity is being redefined through the modernizing landscape, observing where pristine land meets urban space and tradition meets the future.
• Omar Imam, Lebanon. Through collaborative portraits, “Live Love Refugee” explores the struggle of the internal landscape for Syrian refugees who have lost their native ones, the constant uncertainty of exile, the memories that we carry with us, and the hopes that keep us alive.
• Heba Khalifa, Egypt. “Homemade” portrays the anxieties, challenges, and pressures of being a women in Egypt through collaborative and environmental mixed media portraits.
• Roï Saade, Lebanon. “The Epic of Dalieh” highlights one of Beirut’s last natural outcrops, where the public can freely access the coastline, and its imminent closure as the land is given over to developers with plans for a private resort.
• Muhammad Salah, Sudan. “I Want to be Visible” is a personal exploration of skin color and identity, framed by Sudan’s colonial history and mainstream usage of skin lightening products.
• Zara Samiry, Morocco. “Tales of Moroccan Amazons” looks at the traditional equestrian shows that celebrate the historic military art of Berber-Arabs through the emerging participation of female horseback riders who are both challenging the patriarchal tradition and preserving an equestrian art form that is quickly vanishing.
We are pleased to announce the recipient of the 2017 Inge Morath Award, Johanna-Maria Fritz, for her project Like a bird. The Inge Morath Award is a $5,000 production grant given each year to a woman photographer under the age of 30 to support the completion of a long-term documentary project. This year’s finalist is Isadora Romero, for her proposal Amazona Warmikuna.
From a pool of 122 applications from over 30 countries, Johanna-Maria and Isadora were selected by the membership of Magnum Photos at their Annual General Meeting to honor the legacy of their colleague, Inge Morath.
Born in Malsch, Germany, Johanna-Maria Fritz studied photography at Neue Schule für Fotografie. She was highlighted by Time Magazine’s list “Women in Photography: 34 Voices From Around the World,” and is one of the recipients of the 2017 Feature Shoot Emerging Photography Awards. Her work has been published in Tagesspiegel, Neues Deutschland, Fluter, Zeit-online, Vice, and Interview Magazine, and she has exhibited her work internationally.
In her proposal, Johanna-Maria writes:
For Like a bird, I travelled to Palestine, Afghanistan, and the Islamic Republic of Iran. I was especially curious about the role of women in circus life and the environment the circus is based in. Thankfully I was able to get access to the female culture in conservative societies as I am myself a woman… I direct a spectator’s view to different worlds: the one of the circus as well as the society surrounding it and how the social fabric of the circus influences the outside and in turn is influenced itself.
Finalist Isadora Romero works in her home country of Ecuador. Her project Amazona Warmikuna portrays the lives of indigenous women in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Inspired by the myth of the Amazonas, from whom the region received its name, Isadora’s series is a tribute to their mystical vision of the world and their incredible strength.
Both Johanna-Maria and Isadora’s work, in addition to other select applicants, will be presented in the Inge Morath Magazine over the coming year.
“This year’s applicants were unusually strong, almost across the board,” says Magnum Foundation Executive Director Kristen Lubben. “That so many young women under the age of 30--and from countries around the world--already have substantial and distinctive bodies of work to share is really promising for the field as a whole. Being able to support these photographers in the completion of their long-term projects is a fitting way to honor the legacy of Inge Morath, who carved a path for herself as a celebrated photographer in the wake of WWII, working against the grain of what was expected of women at the time.”
Magnum Foundation is a non-profit organization that expands creativity and diversity in documentary photography, activating new audiences and ideas through the innovative use of images. Through grantmaking, mentoring, and creative collaborations, we partner with socially engaged imagemakers experimenting with new models for storytelling.
Announcing the 2017 Arab Documentary Photography Program Grantees
Fethi Sahraoui
Alongside The Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC) and the Prince Claus Fund (PCF), Magnum Foundation (MF) is pleased to announce the 2017 Arab Documentary Photography Program grantees, nine emerging and early career photographers from across the Arab region. The Arab Documentary Photography Program offers production support for long-term creative projects within a six-month individual mentorship program with Randa Shaath, Eric Gottesman, Tanya Habjouqua, and Peter van Agtmael. Over the course of the program, the grantees come together for two intensive workshops in Beirut to aid in the development of their projects. This year’s grantees are:
This year’s grantees were selected from 80 applicants from 15 countries, by a three-member jury in Beirut on July 2, 2017. The jurors were Fouad El Khoury, Lebanese photographer, Susan Meiselas, American documentary photographer and President of the Magnum Foundation, and Wafaa Bilal, Iraqi-born photographer. They issued the following statement:
The 2017 Arab Documentary Photography Program (ADPP) received more than 80 proposals from socially engaged applicants who share the urge to catalyze changes through their lenses. The pool of applicants actively seeks to document some of the most urgent issues in the Arab world with their unique artistic voice.
ADPP invests in the personal journeys of these individual photographers through a program where each of them can evolve their artistic practice. We as the jury were constantly reminded in making our selection, how the program can benefit the applicants in forming their distinctive identity. Within the framework of this mentorship program that benefits a limited number of grantees, during the selection process, we tried to maintain geographic and social diversity to find voices in both male and female photographers. The topics chosen by the artists were thought provoking for us; in return we were aware of their individual experiences and background and thus very conscious about why their artistic concepts were chosen. After long and open discussions, the three jurors, who had different perspectives in photography, agreed on 9 finalists with 2 alternatives who share a good balance between the relevance and the quality of their proposed projects, and show great personal potential.
The program was created to support and amplify creative approaches to visual storytelling that challenge conventional narratives about the region. Now in its fourth year, it has supported projects by 36 photographers from 15 countries, which have been published and exhibited both regionally and internationally. You can see past completed projects at arabdocphotography.org.
Magnum Foundation is a non-profit organization that expands creativity and diversity in documentary photography, activating new audiences and ideas through the innovative use of images. Through grantmaking, mentoring, and creative collaborations, we partner with socially engaged imagemakers experimenting with new models for storytelling.
The Photography Expanded symposium, on June 8, explored collectivity, authorship, participation, and collaboration in photography and creative documentary practice. Presenters showcased projects from a range of disciplines and fostered exchange about what it means to partner with other makers, subjects, and publics.
Photography and Social Justice program mentor Danielle Jackson advises on the fellows' project plans for the coming months. #magnumfoundation #documentaryphotography (at Magnum Foundation)
Thank you all for spending your Saturday with us and our incredible co-hosts 10x10photobooks at the Awake Reading Room, Book and Zine Bazaar. We were so happy to open our space to you all and to the wonder humans of 3 Dot Zine, Aperture Foundation, Bluestockings Bookstore, Archive of Modern Conflict, Brown and Proud Press, 8ball Community, Interference Archive, En Foco,Inc., Red Hook Editions, Research and Destroy, and The New Press!
Feminism, queer and gender studies, global capitalism, climate & environment, political theory, war, police and prisons, race and black studies, radical education, justice, liberty, and equity, and and and 🗯
Join us TOMORROW at the Awake Reading Room, Book & Zine Bazaar with @10x10photobooks! We'll be joined by @archive_of_modern_conflict, @redhookeditions, @bluestockingsnyc, @bppzines and more. Free-the-Image-and-Free-the-Speech!
“Mfon: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora,” features images by 100 women from around the world and offers a challenge to anyone who says they don’t know of any black women photographers.
Featuring grantees Joana Choumali, Endia Beal Photography, and Kameelah Rasheed.
romaincrisis
blakekathryn
stormborns
annaxmalina
ellievsbear
baratheonpilled