Announcing the 2016 Recipient of the Emerging Photographer Fund from Burn Magazine

Magnum Foundation is pleased to continue its partnership with Burn Magazine’s annual Emerging Photographer Fund award and to congratulate Annie Flanagan for her deeply important work.

Documentary photographer Annie Flanagan has been named the winner of the Emerging Photographer Fund for 2016 from Burn Magazine for her project “Deafening Sound.” Flanagan’s photographs reveal “the deep roots of gendered violence and rape culture in American society” and challenge viewers to confront how such systematic violence persists in this country. 

In particular, Flanagan’s work explores the effects that gendered violence and rape culture have on mental health. In the in-depth research she conducted to accompany her photographs, she reports that 7 in 10 women who experience psychological abuse from an intimate partner also exhibit symptoms of PTSD. The long-term effects of gendered violence, she argues, can look very similar to the symptoms of veterans who have seen heavy combat.

She says, “I am constantly working to further my investigation of this epidemic and visually address issues of gendered violence and representations of women in American society.” With this funding she will complete a film that follows a woman named Nekqua before, directly after and years after her assault and to photograph rural domestic violence in Alaska, “where the rate of reported rape is three times the national average.”

At its current stage, “Deafening Sound” combines “three documentary projects, a portrait series and a collection of artifacts.” Read more from Annie Flanagan about her process here.