<a href='http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=MAGO31_10_VForm&ERID=24KL53ZLJS' target='_blank'>Chien-Chi Chang</a> and <a href='http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=MAGO31_10_VForm&ERID=24KL5359SL' target='_blank'>Thomas Dworzak</a> have been chosen to receive 2016 Magnum Foundation Emergency Fund grants.
<a href='http://www.magnumfoundation.org/#emergency-fund-1' target='_blank'>The Magnum Foundation</a> is pleased to announce this year’s recipients of the Emergency Fund, a program that supports independent photographers to produce in depth and creative stories on underreported issues. This year's grants are made in collaboration with the Prince Claus Fund, which is expanding the support for photographers working on critical issues in their home regions, specifically within Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe.
This year’s grantees were selected by an independent editorial committee from a pool of 140 photographers nominated by 26 international editors, curators, and educators. “I anticipate this group of visual artists will produce transcendent and extraordinary photography in 2016 and well beyond. They are a remarkable group of talented, diverse, and devoted people,” said editorialmcommittee member James Wellford.
The Magnum Foundation fosters creativity, innovation, and diversity in documentary photography. The Prince Claus Fund channels support in spaces where cultural expression and creative production are limited or restricted. This convergence of values is expanding the capacity of the Emergency Fund to amplify independent perspectives often overlooked in mainstream media.
This year’s grantees include 18 photographers workingnin15 different countries. A hallmark of the Emergency Fund program is its support for socially engaged photographers working within their own communities. “The ability to increase our financial support for photographers who are reporting on issues in their own countries creates new, vital, and alternative sources of shared information. There are few opportunities that offer photographers the potential for impact and recognition in the way that the Emergency Fund does,” remarked editorial committee member Alexa Dilworth.
The 2016 grantees join an accomplished group of 60 previous grantees, bringing the number of photographers supported by the EF over the past seven years to 78. The collaboration with the Prince Claus Fund has made this the largest group of EF grantees supported in a single year, enabling a significant increase in both the number of projects being produced and in the geographic representation of the photographers. A total of $138,000 will be dispersed across this year’s supported projects, the most grant funds dispersed in a single year to date.
The range of issues and approaches this year’s grantees are covering is extraordinary, including projects by Injinaash Bor, exploring teen culture and generational shifts within Mongolian society; by Thomas Dworzak, a seasoned photographer who in addition to photographing the refugee crisis, will create a resource guide to distribute amongst refugees; and by Endia Beal, looking at the commonalities of experience shared by African American women in the workplace.
CHIEN-CHI CHANG
The Price of Isolation, Burma.
The project will closely examine the important turning points in Aung San Suu Kyi’s (The Lady) transition from inspiration to leader. The upcoming months and years are when the last remains of the old world order often make a last stand, the powerful try to seek accommodations with the new world order and when the people’s loyalty and demands for quick change are tested. The project will take the form of still images, moving images, and soundscape.
THOMAS DWORZAK
The Guide for Refugees, Europe.
As initiator and part of a Magnum photographers group project to create a visual "guide book" for refugees arriving in Europe. I am planning to photograph the current situation on the refugee trail and in the countries where they end up and relevant for them just before the deadline of the book being published, May 2016.
Visit the <a href='http://www.magnumfoundation.org/2016-emergencyfund-announcement' target='_blank'>Magnum Foundation website</a> for more information.