Announcing the 2022 Inge Morath Award

Johis Alarcón

Magnum Foundation, Magnum Photos, and the Inge Morath Estate are pleased to announce Johis Alarcón as the recipient of this year’s Inge Morath Award. Alarcón will receive a $7,500 production grant to support the completion of her long-term documentary project, Because the sun looked at me. This year’s finalist, Spandita Malik, will receive a $1,000 grant in support of her project.

Alarcón is a freelance photographer based in Ecuador. Her work is focused on social justice, human rights, and gender related issues, and in 2021 she was a Magnum Foundation Photography and Social Justice Fellow.

Johis Alarcón

Alarcón’s project explores the story of the daughters and granddaughters of Black women who survived slavery in Latin America. In a region where one in every four people identifies as an Afro-descendant, the term Cimarrona refers to the wild female spirit who holds an African essence and expresses it in all forms of resistance against racism. The project follows the Cimarrona Women Guard in Cauca Community, Northern Colombia, a community self-protection initiative that seeks to protect the territory autonomously – building on more than five centuries of resistance. In keeping their African legacy alive in their spirituality and activism, the women are able to reaffirm their identity, protect their territories, and resist racism. As one woman, Sista Karla, shared, “You are lucky to live with your mother, my people were deterritorialized and I never got to meet my mom, Africa. The only way for us to get back to her is through our spirituality.”

Alarcón’s project was selected from a pool of 83 applications by the membership of Magnum Photos. Given each year to a woman or nonbinary photographer under the age of 30, the award honors the legacy of their colleague, Inge Morath.

On receiving the award, Alarcón shared: “At first, I could not believe that I was selected. The previous winners are people that I admire a lot and I consider them as a guide in my career and my life. I am extremely grateful to receive this award and I feel a great responsibility and a lot of emotion to continue my work on the Cimarronas women in Latin America because their strength and love have marked me as a woman and as a photographer. I can only imagine the new stories, places and encounters that will come soon.”

Spandita Malik

This year’s finalist, Spandita Malik, is being recognized for her project Nā́rī, a series of collaborative portraits featuring embroidery by women unable to leave their homes in India due to their husbands or fathers, some of whom are domestic abuse survivors.

Malik is a visual artist from India. Her work is concerned with the current global socio-political state of affairs with an emphasis on women’s rights and gendered violence. Malik’s work in expanded documentary and social-practice consciously emanates from the idea of decolonizing the eye and aesthetic surrounding documentary photography of India. On being named a finalist, Malik shared: “I am humbled to be the finalist of the prestigious Inge Morath Award. I am honored that ‘Nā́rī’ is named amongst distinguished works that have not only been transformative to my personal growth, but have also been an instrument of change in the world. I have been working on this project for the past three years and I am motivated to expand it to several communities of women in India, continuing to share stories in our inherited language of embroidery.”

Spandita Malik

Congratulations to these two outstanding photographers. To follow more of their work, visit their websites at johannaalarcon.com and spandita-malik.com.