“Thanks to the $30,000 Smith Grant she received in 2000, Brenda’s was able to continue her journey on documenting what she started “Money Power Respect”. Her work on Andy &Tata is so strong and compelling it brought tears with the audience at the Smith fund ceremony. I was full of emotion that night when I got to meet Andy and Tata. I am very proud of the work Brenda is continuing doing.”
Marcel Saba
“When I was in school, W. Eugene Smith, the man who integrated his life and his work, was the inspiration for me and my fellowstudents, though I am sure that they nor I would fully grasp why until years later when we began working seriously at photograph. I photographed for years in my Brooklyn neighborhood with out really showing anyone except Eugene Richards, who I was interning for at the time. Gene had wrote me an 11 page letter about the work and then I kept on for another three years before really “bringing” it anywhere. When Marcel Saba called me in the fall of 2000, he knew I would not believe it, but I had won the Gene Smith Prize. I just got off the phone and cried “All my life I was told that there were things that I could not do because they were for “some bodies” and in photography I was not this. Yet the legacy of Gene Smith and those that have come before me in this family that I am now a part of, made me feel that just for a moment anybody could be somebody if passion be the gauge. Thanks you every body for helping me continue my work. In gratitude”
Brenda Ann Kenneally, Grant Recipient, 2000
