Magnum Foundation 2022 in Review

 

Clockwise from top left: Doaa Nasr, Ameen Abo Kaseem, Sanna Irshad Mattoo, Isadora Romero, Ieva Saudargaite Douaihi, Juanita Escobar, and Mohammad Kotb. Center: Marilyn Nance.

Magnum Foundation supported over 64 projects in 2022, with a focus on those that creatively reframe the past to engage with urgent questions of the present and future. Through grants, mentorship, and continued opportunities to collaborate and connect, we sustained a creative home base for our international network of social justice-focused photographers to experiment with new models for impactful storytelling.

Below are some highlights of the incredible breadth of activity and achievements of our creative community over the past year. Thank you to all of our partners, supporters, friends, grantees, and fellows for keeping us engaged, informed, and connected.

 

We supported twenty projects that creatively reframe the past to engage with urgent questions of the present and future

Our 2022 Counter Histories initiative supported twenty artists to receive grants, take part in project development workshops, and connect with collaborative partners and networks as part of our ongoing Photography Expanded series that experiments with new approaches to visual storytelling. With projects that confront official histories, insert alternative narratives, and build inclusive archives for the future, this intergenerational and transnational cohort stages critical interventions into the existing visual landscape of archives and memory.

“How can I highlight LGBTQ+ role models and question what American heroism looks like? How can archival images and mementos illuminate a silenced history?” Mackenzie Calle confronts the American space program’s historical exclusion of openly queer astronauts

“How have African spiritualism and religion impacted my family? How can I examine this through the lens of family history, religion, the African Diaspora and against western perspectives?” Naomieh Jovin explores African spiritualism and religion through family albums in the artist’s Haitian-American family.

“I am exploring Sudan's history with military coups and revolutions in the past and the present, and how these political events affect the country's future.” Salih Basheer documents stories of the generation of young people who participated in the December 2019 revolution in Sudan — most of whom have an official birth date of January 1, 1989.

“This community driven project is an act of self determination, and time travel. Can I create a story that will serve and inspire the people?” Marilyn Nance expands access to her historical images of FESTAC ’77 – a key piece of Pan African history that has been erased.

“Can histories be colonized even in imagination? Can colonial narratives be re-imagined? Can we center those displaced and disempowered from their own histories and stories through photography — through photography?” Tamara Abdul Hadi explores historic and contemporary visual representations of the Southern Iraqi Marshes and its people.

Over the course of the initiative, the grantees have worked to expand and complete their projects while coming together as a creative community in interdisciplinary exploration and collaboration. We look forward to sharing more from their projects with you in the new year!

 

We centered local histories in public spaces

In June, we exhibited Soumya Sankar Bose’s long-term project on the 1979 Marichjhapi massacre in West Bengal, India at the annual Photoville festival in Brooklyn Bridge Park. Photo by Liz Marie Sanders.

In March and April, we wheatpasted photographs and statistics visualizing the impacts of the climate crisis around Washington D.C. in partnership with Dysturb.

In May we celebrated Lower East Side History Month with a zine workshop honoring neighborhood histories. Photo by Tif Ng.

Also for Lower East Side History Month, we made use of the ground floor windows of our building to exhibit Tif Ng’s portraits spotlighting women of the Basement Workshop, one of Chinatown’s first Asian-American political and arts organizations in the 1970’s. Photo by Tif Ng.

 

We mentored ten photographers from the Arab region to complete long-term projects, and twelve more embarked on new projects to be completed in 2023

Ten imagemakers in the eighth cycle of the Arab Documentary Photography Program, a joint mentorship initiative with the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture and the Prince Claus Fund, completed stereotype-defying projects from across the Arab region. Over the course of two intensive workshops and months-long mentorship, their stories join the rich body of 74 projects produced since 2014, now viewable on the program’s English-Arabic web gallery.

Ieva Saudargaite Douaihi searches for the few remaining green spaces in Beirut. “No matter the extent of human activity, the wilderness is always rushing back in to claim its place amongst us.”

Ameen Abo Kaseem makes sense of the past, present, and future as a young Palestinian-Syrian. “The love and intimacy we share in a deserted place is a layer of poetry that allows us to survive in the midst of uncertainty and daily trauma.”

Mohammad Kotb documents a vicious cycle in which young girls are forced to forgo their education for hard labor in brick factories along the Nile.

“Sometimes I see myself as a movie character, as it resembles the internal war with my own ideas that is the world of an unmarried woman in her thirties from Upper Egypt.” Doaa Nasr poses as Chip from “The Cable Guy” for her project The Many Disguises of Miss Invisible.

Ahmed Qabel embraces temporary community on the third class train to Cairo. “While traveling to university by train, I noticed a sound coming from afar and getting gradually louder. A traveling salesman was inviting random passengers to his brother’s wedding.”

In Cairo, development threatens the home of Mohamed Hozyen’s grandmother, along with 70 years of memories.

In September, the twelve photographers from the ninth cycle of the fellowship gathered in Beirut to begin their fellowships. 

 

Our global Photography and Social Justice Fellows reflected on their approaches to socially engaged documentary practice

In May, our 2021 Photography and Social Justice Fellows presented their fellowship projects, reflecting on their experiences exploring the innovative ways creative storytellers can lead and enact change. 

Isadora Romero explores ancestral memory and seed biodiversity in Colombia.

“Social justice is not only a practice that is done outwards, denouncing inequities and injustices, but also inwards in the ways in which we relate, in the ways in which we work with colleagues, in the ways in which we learn and appreciate each other needs for producing, have off time and resting as well and being aware of our own mental health. I believe that this program incorporates that concept in all its magnitude.”
— Isadora Romero, 2021 Photography and Social Justice Fellow
 

We supported community-based storytelling around the world

Juanita Escobar on a dance troupe’s perseverance amid the pandemic in Colombia, published in NPR for our ongoing editorial coverage of the global impacts of Covid-19.

We provided project-development grants and mentorship to dozens of artists at various stages of their processes. Under our Counter Histories umbrella, we partnered with the World Monument Fund to award twelve grants to photographers to document endangered cultural sites around the world, highlighting their significance within their own communities. For the 2022 Inge Morath Award, we recognized Johis Alarcón as the recipient and Spandita Malik as the finalist. With support from The Commonwealth Fund, we launched an open call for photographic projects on health equity in the United States, to be published in The Atlantic magazine.

 

We came together in support and celebration of our community

We close out 2022 thrilled to be back in our newly renovated space in the East Village’s Fourth Street Arts Block, which we reopened with An Expression of Absence: Selections from the Arab Documentary Photography Program, exhibited jointly at the Magnum Foundation and Bronx Documentary Center. It’s been a joy to once again gather in person with our community of artists and organizers, and we look forward to the ongoing use of our space as a multi-purpose site for exhibitions, events, and partnerships. Our team has been strengthened with the addition of Jasmin Chang, who oversaw the renovation of the space and now leads its activation as Space Manager.

Our virtual community calls continue, bringing together our dispersed global grantee network monthly for project sharing, ongoing learning, and mutual support. We were honored to welcome Magnum Foundation Fellows Ally Caple and Sean Sirota, as well as interns Samaira Wilson and Irynka Hromotska, who have made valuable contributions to our team while pursuing their photographic and research projects. 2022 saw the release of several Magnum Foundation affiliated publications, including Julie Ault’s Hidden in Plain Sight: Selected Writings of Karen Higa, Laylah Amatullah Barrayn’s We Are Present: 2020 in Portraits, and Rian Dundon’s Protest City. Throughout the year, we’ve been honored to share space—both in-person and virtually—with our community of vital storytellers and leaders.

Opening night of An Expression of Absence: Selections from the Arab Documentary Photography Program at the Magnum Foundation

Spring 2022 Magnum Foundation Fellow Ally Caple, intern Samaira Wilson, and Fall 2021 Magnum Foundation Fellow Tif Ng

2021-2022 Arab Documentary Photography Program grantee Samar Abu Elouf working with mentor Tanya Habjouqa

2021 Arab Documentary Photography Program grantee Lina Khalid learning 4x5 from Magnum Foundation Fellow Sean Sirota while in residence at the Bronx Documentary Center

NYC-based Counter Histories grantees looking at work in the Magnum Foundation space

2021 Photography and Social Justice Fellow Johis Alarcón (right) shares her new book with Magnum Foundation Executive Director Kristen Lubben (left) and Board President Susan Meiselas (center)

2020 Magnum Foundation Fund Grantee Laila Annmarie Stevens (left) and 2020 ADPP Grantee Maen Hammad (right) in front of Maen’s project, featured in An Expression of Absence: Selections from the Arab Documentary Photography Program at the Magnum Foundation and Bronx Documentary Center

2022-2023 Arab Documentary Photography Program workshop in Beirut

Yael Martínez and Susan Meiselas preview VR work by Soumya Sankar Bose

Nolan Ryan Trowe exhibited his 2020 Photography and Social Justice Fellowship project at Photoville

Magnum Foundation alumni gathered for an impromptu reunion at Les Rencontres d'Arles 2022!

2018 and 2016 Arab Documentary Photography Program grantees Abdo Shanan and Roï Saade discuss collaborating on Abdo’s book during a Magnum Foundation community call

Members of the Magnum Foundation team at our Lower East Side History Month zine workshop

2022 Counter Histories grantee Alice Proujansky with fellow Photography Expanded alum Sim Chi Yin

 

We are grateful for your partnership as we anchor our creative home base for the years to come

In the fifteen years since our founding, Magnum Foundation has supported over 600 photographers from 80 countries to be effective storytellers, creative leaders, and changemakers. As we look ahead, we are committed to sustaining a creative home base for our global network of visual storytellers whose diverse voices and visions will shape our communities and world for the better. Thank you for your partnership.

2022 Inge Morath Awardee Johis Alarcón documents the stories of Afro-descendent women in Ecuador and Colombia.

 

Magnum Foundation community in the news:

This year, we celebrated the many accomplishments of our past grantees and fellows, whom we saw exhibit and publish projects they developed in our programs, gain support and recognition from various awards and grants, and continue their work as vital storytellers and leaders in their communities. While too many detail in full, see below for some highlights!

Exhibitions:

Publications and Press:

  • Marilyn Nance: Last Day in Lagos is the first monograph to compile 2022 Counter Histories grantee Marilyn Nance’s photographic archive documenting the landmark FESTAC’77 pan-African festival in Nigeria. Read more from Siddhartha Mitter’s piece on the project in The New York Times.

  • The Nation published 2020 Photography and Social Justice Fellow Nolan Ryan Trowe’s powerful story on disabled Americans rationing medical equipment during the pandemic.

  • The Guardian reviewed Curran Hatleberg's latest book, River's Dream, a project initiated with a 2015 Magnum Foundation Fund grant.

  • For The New York Times, 2022 Magnum Foundation Fellow Sean Sirota photographed Felipe Rodriguez, a man who was wrongfully incarcerated for 27 years and exonerated in 2019. 

  • 2020 Arab Documentary Photography Program grantee Myriam Boulos’s project on women’s sexual fantasies was featured in the British Journal of Photography.

  • The British Journal of Photography profiled 2019 Arab Documentary Photography Program and 2022 Counter Histories grantee Salih Basheer in their Ones to Watch list.

  • 2021 Photography and Social Justice fellow and 2017 Arab Documentary Photography Program grantee Mohamed Mahdy was featured in The Guardian’s Emerging talent in photojournalism list.

  • The New York Times profiled 2015 PSJ Fellow Dieu-Nalio Chéry and his relocation to New York City after he was targeted by media-focused violence his home country of Haiti.

  • 2019 Inge Morath Award finalist Ionna Sakellaraki published Truth in Soil as a photobook.

  • A Woman on the Outside, a film that began in a Photography Expanded workshop and later was exhibited at Photoville, had its premier at South By Southwest Film Festival in March, and has screenings around the United States. 

  • Art21 profiled Photography Expanded grantee Kameelah Janan Rasheed in a short film exploring the artist’s text-based process.

  • The October issue of National Geographic features a 24-page spread of work by 2017 Photography and Social Justice fellow Elias Williams on Black Homeownership in St. Albans, Queens.

Awards:

  • 2017 Photography and Social Justice Fellow Fabiola Ferrero was named the recipient of the 12th Carmignac Photojournalism Award for her project focusing on Venezuela’s vanishing middle class.

  • The shortlist for 2022 Paris Photo–Aperture PhotoBook Awards included five Magnum Foundation alums: Oscar B. Castillo, Stacy Kranitz, Marilyn Nance, Curran Hatleberg, and Jim Goldberg.

  • 2019 Photography and Social Justice fellow and 2018 On Religion grantee Yael Martínez received the National Geographic Wayfinder Award.

  • 2021 Photography and Social Justice fellow and 2017 Arab Documentary Photography Program grantee Mohamed Mahdy and 2021 Inge Morath Award Finalist Taniya Sarkar were named finalists for the 2022 W. Eugene Smith Student Grant.

  • Two 2021 fellows had their fellowship projects recognized in this year’s World Press Photo Awards. Photography and Social Justice fellow Isadora Romero won both the global and South America open format awards for her video project Blood is a Seed (La Sangre Es Una Semilla). Arab Documentary Photography Program grantee Rehab Eldalil won the Africa open format award for her photo essay The Longing of the Stranger Whose Path Has Been Broken. 

  • 2021 Photography and Social Justice fellow Sanna Irshad Mattoo was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her Covid reporting with Reuters.  

  • 2021 Photography and Social Justice Fellow Isadora Romero was among the 12 recipients of this year's Prince Claus Mentorship Awards.

  • 2017 Photography and Social Justice fellow Tako Robakidze was awarded the Stanley Greene Legacy Prize and Fellowship.

 
 
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