The W. Eugene Smith Fund announces that Matt Black is the recipient of its 2015 grant in humanistic photography for his project, The Geography of Poverty, which takes a hard look at poverty in America and challenges leaders and citizens alike to address fundamental inequalities across society. The project’s objective is to look at the cost and consequences of poverty and help facilitate fundamental changes in society while narrowing the distance between the haves and have-nots. The $30,000 grant was presented to Matt Black, a photographer at Magnum Photos, during the foundation’s 36th annual awards ceremony at the SVA Theater in New York City.
After two decades of photographing poverty, migration and farming in California’s Central Valley, Black set out to discover other poverty-stricken towns across the U.S. Unfortunately, they weren’t difficult to find. The cross-country trek, supported by MSNBC, the Magnum Foundation, the Pulitzer Center, and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, documented the stories of individuals and communities from America’s poorest regions. Black’s goal was to cross the country without ever crossing the poverty line and profiling cities and towns of all sizes and sharing specific issues facing each community.
Mary F. Calvert and Marcus Bleasdale were also honored as co-recipients of the Smith Fund Fellowship for their respective projects and will share the $5,000 award. Calvert’s project, The Battle Within: Sexual Violence in America’s Military, exposed the effects of Military Sexual Trauma on the estimated 19,000 victims that are raped or sexually assaulted each year in America’s military. Marcus Bleasdale received recognition for Financing the Failure of a State which studied the turmoil in the Central African Republic and the impact a state’s failure has on its people. “It is such a huge honor to receive this year’s Smith Fellowship,” explains Bleasdale. A new book titled, “The Unravelling: Central African Republic,” which documents Bleasdale’s project, has been published by FotoEvidence.
Recipients of the 2015 W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund grant and fellowship were selected from more than 220 submissions received from 40 countries. Recent recipients of the grant include Joseph Sywenkyj (2014), Robin Hammond (2013), Peter van Agtmael (2012), and Krisanne Johnson (2011).
This year’s Howard Chapnick Grant was presented to Tom Garber from Third Wave Films for Pixel Nation, a film project about how digital technology has taken us to a world of shared images with a far greater collective and political impact than at any point in our history. The project looks at the origin of photography 175 years ago and clearly gives credit to George Eastman for showing us how to see, and what to look for, when taking pictures.
The W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund is presented annually to photographers whose work is judged by a panel of experts to be in the best tradition of the compassionate dedication exhibited by W. Eugene Smith during his 45-year career in photojournalism. The grant enables recipients to undertake and complete worthy photojournalistic projects.
