W. Eugene Smith Fund: 2021 Grant Recipients
The W. Eugene Smith Fund – which supports photographers whose work follows W. Eugene Smith’s tradition of humanistic photography and the dedicated compassion highlighted during his 45-year career as a photo essayist – has announced the recipients of the 42nd Eugene Smith Annual Grant in Humanistic Photography, as well as the recipient of his 4th Annual Smith Student Fellowship which is awarded to encourage leadership in any field auxiliary to photojournalism, such as image editing, research, education, and management. The W. Eugene Smith Memorial Grant is presented annually to photographers whose work is judged by a panel of experts to be in the best tradition of the documentary photographic practice exhibited by W. Eugene Smith.
This year, the grant was again presented to five recipients with each receiving $10,000 to continue their projects. Smith Fund board member Marcia Allert was this year’s lead juror for the Smith Grant, along with judges Darcy Eveleigh, a freelance photo editor, and former chairwoman and past juror for the Pulitzer Prize, multi-award-winning photographer Elizabeth Dalziel, and Michael Hamtil, Assistant Director of Multimedia at The St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
The recipients of the 2021 W. Eugene Smith Grant are: Lalo de Almeida (Brazil), Kimberly dela Cruz (Philippines), Melissa Lyttle (USA), Cristopher Rogel Blanquet (Mexico), Nicolò Filippo Rosso (Italy).
Lalo de Almeida
Amazonian Dystopia documents the occupation of the Amazon and its impact on the rainforest and its inhabitants.
Brazil is home to 60% of the Amazon rainforest, which is a key regulator for the planet’s living systems and the country’s rainfall rate. Despite this importance for the planet’s future, the region continues to be exploited in the same predatory way since colonial times.
Kimberly dela Cruz
Death of a Nation is a project about the shattering of Philippine democracy which has always been fragile.
The story is told through the experiences of families who lost their loved ones to the war on drugs, their trauma, desensitization to violence, impunity, and grief. But there is also hope. Families of victims became part of grief and justice-oriented networks where they found a support system and built a community of their own, helping each other heal and find courage.
Melissa Lyttle
Last fall, Melissa Lyttle began to document the confederate monuments that have been taken down since George Floyd’s death, a moment in time viewed as a turning point when she felt the U.S. was beginning to try and figure out what it was going to become as a nation.
Confederate monuments started coming down in record numbers. So, in April 2021, she began a 5-week, 7,300-mile road trip through the South to record an unraveling — that moment in time when long-held narratives about Southern pride and memorialization of Civil War leaders are literally being knocked off their pedestals.
Cristopher Rogel Blanquet
Beautiful Poison is a long-term photography project documenting the public health problem associated with the unrestricted use of agrochemicals by the flower industry in the region of Villa Guerrero, Mexico.
This project documents the lives of four families in Villa Guerrero that have suffered child loss, genetic disabilities, and chronic diseases related to agrochemicals and entrusted Cristopher to tell their stories.
Nicolò Filippo Rosso
In Latin America, a lack of job opportunities, access to education, political corruption, and impunity have persisted for generations fueling a circle of violence and displacement that is both the symptom and the cause of a disrupted society.
For four years, Nicolo Filippo Rosso has traveled along migration routes documenting the journey of refugees and migrants from Venezuela to Colombia and from Central America to Mexico and the United States. Following children, adolescents, and pregnant and nursing women from different countries, he has seen countless stories of loss merging into a single narrative through the eyes of the most vulnerable migrants: those who are born, grow and die on the move. Decades of civil war, poverty, or violence make it difficult for migrants to find better conditions than those they are fleeing from. Crossing borderlands controlled by gangs and rebel groups, people are exposed to trafficking and recruitment. Some never reach their destination. Others continue to move, often on foot, hoping to find a place where to start a new chapter of their lives.
Salih Basheer, Student Grant Recipient
The W. Eugene Smith Grant for Student Photographers is designed to encourage and support students whose photographic work renews the tradition of W. Eugene Smith’s humanistic and compassionate photography.
Salih Basheer (Sudan), a student at the Danish School Of Media And Journalism (DMJX), received the $5,000 Eugene Smith Student grant for “22 Days in Between,” a narrative journey looking back at the loss of his parents and the challenges of settling into a new home with his grandmother. This project is Salih’s visual process of learning more about his parents and himself and serves as a method of healing from the trauma of losing his parents. Salih says that having a camera in his hand gave him the courage and comfort level to ask questions about his parents and their deaths.
Cover picture by Nicolò Filippo Rosso.
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