CatchLight, a San Francisco–based nonprofit harnessing the power of visual storytelling to change the world, announced the 2026 CatchLight Global Fellows at the CatchLight Visual Storytelling Summit on May 2, 2026, each receiving a $30,000 grant. The CatchLight Global Fellowship supports creative leaders who want to cultivate significant audience engagement through inventive distribution methods that will increase the impact of their work.
The 2026 CatchLight Global Fellows expand documentary visual storytelling through long-term collaboration, deep attention to place, and practices that foreground lived experience and community voice. Katie Baldwin Basile, an Alaska-based photojournalist and filmmaker, works closely with rural Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta communities and youth to co-create multimedia stories rooted in Indigenous knowledge, daily life, and contemporary change; South African photographer Gulshan Khan’s work spans memory, belonging, justice, and spirituality, engaging Muslim communities across Southern Africa through ethically grounded, mentorship-driven storytelling and archival practices; and Dominican filmmaker and photographer Michael Lees explores climate, land, and identity in the Caribbean, his collaborative practice centers resilience and the enduring relationship between people and the environments they inhabit.
In addition to the grants, CatchLight connects the fellows with a network of partners, mentors and collaborators for customized support to help them achieve their goals during and beyond their fellowship year.
This year’s Global Fellowship recipients are visual leaders and storytellers responding to the weight of the present moment. Their work intertwines themes of migration, climate change, and authorship, reflecting the complexities of our time. They are deeply engaged in what lies beneath the images they make, and ways visual storytelling can become a more communal process.
CatchLight supports what they do next by lifting up their work and exploring meaningful ways to engage different audiences.
2026 CATCHLIGHT GLOBAL FELLOWS
KATIE BALDWIN BASILE
Katie Baldwin Basile is a photojournalist, documentary photographer and filmmaker with a focus on her home, the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region of Alaska. Basile’s work has appeared on PBS News Hour and in The Washington Post Magazine, NPR, The New York Times and High Country News Magazine.
Basile began her career as a teaching artist and has more than a decade of experience collaborating on multimedia stories with rural Alaskan youth. From Yup’ik kayak building to the high teacher turnover rate, youth-led storytelling continues to expand Katie’s understanding of traditional and contemporary rural Alaska.
Basile is a We, Women Photo and IWMF grantee and the co-recipient of a National Edward R. Murrow Award for excellence in video through her work at KYUK Public Media. She directed the award-winning short film “To Keep as One” in collaboration with the Newtok Village Council which premiered at the 2020 Big Sky Film Festival. Katie lives in Bethel, Alaska with her husband and two young sons.
GULSHAN KHAN
Gulshan Khan’s work traverses layered dimensions of the human experience, engaging memory, belonging, justice, dignity, and our interconnectedness with the natural world. Rooted in a belief in the transformative power of authentic storytelling, her practice seeks to create space for recognition and empathy, contributing to more just and equitable ways of seeing one another.
A National Geographic Explorer and former AFP stringer, the first female South African Canon Ambassador, and a 2019 honouree of Hundred Heroines. Khan’s work spans themes including politics, climate change, gender-based violence, culture, and spirituality, and has been published internationally.
Alongside her editorial and artistic practice, Khan is deeply invested in education and mentorship. She teaches photography with a strong focus on ethics and visual responsibility, and consults on visual, archival, and storytelling projects. Her work forms part of the Iziko South African National Gallery’s permanent collection and archive, and her exhibitions have reached audiences globally.
Central to her practice is The Things We Carry With Us, a long-term body of work examining Muslim communities in Southern Africa through the legacies of the Indian Ocean slave trade, political exile, racial segregation, resilience, and love; Khan contributes to preserving memory and legacy for future generations.
MICHAEL LEES
Michael Lees is a Dominican filmmaker, photographer, and storyteller whose work explores the intersections of climate, memory, land, and identity in the Caribbean. UK-born, US-educated and Dominica-based, Lees strikes to deepen his connection to place and community. His first feature documentary emerged after his experience surviving Hurricane Maria alone amongst nature and devastation, an experience that shaped his artistic practice.
UNCIVILIZED. screened internationally – including at Locarno Film Festival 2024 – is now used in universities for environmental and post-colonial studies. His films center rural Caribbean lives with intimacy and dignity, challenging global narratives that overlook small-island experiences.
He is currently developing Behind God’s Back, a cinematic portrait of the abandoned village of Petite Savanne and the people who continue to return to its forbidden landscape. His work blends observational filmmaking with environmental portraiture, using the Caribbean’s forests, ruins, and silences as narrative elements.
Beyond filmmaking, Lees leads the Waitukubuli Artist Association supporting emerging + established creatives, and produces visual content for NGOs, private clients, and regional campaigns. His practice is grounded in community collaboration and a commitment to reframing how Caribbean stories are told, foregrounding resilience, complexity, and the deep ties between people and the land that shapes them.
About CatchLight:
CatchLight is a visual-first media organization that leverages the power of visual storytelling to inform, connect, and transform communities. It brings resources and organizations together to discover, develop, and amplify visual storytellers at all levels. The organization invests in the future of visual storytelling through two fellowship programs. CatchLight Local seeks to establish the long-term sustainability of visual journalism by pairing partner newsrooms with community-based visual journalists, Local Fellows, to provide inclusive, in-depth, accurate, and locally contextualized information to the public. The CatchLight Global Fellowship annually provides three visionaries in the field grants to develop long-form storytelling projects, engage audiences, and continue their work as innovators and leaders defining the future of the field. For more information: www.catchlight.io
