ICP Announces the Recipients of the 2013 Rita and Alex Hillman Foundation Fellowship

The International Center of Photography (ICP) is proud to announce that Antonio Bolfo, Eric Michael Johnson, and Ramon Ruis Sampaio, alumni from the Documentary Photography and Photojournalism program, have been named recipients of the 2013 Rita K. Hillman Foundation Fellowship. Each will receive a grant of $10,000 in support of an exemplary photographic project that addresses a critical issue in healthcare today and will be mentored by an appointed member of ICP’s faculty.

“The goal of the Fellowship is to identify gifted young photographers and to provide assistance at the beginning of their creative careers,” said Mark Robbins, Executive Director, ICP. “In time the program will yield a body of work depicting an increasingly important story of healthcare in America.”

Antonio Bolfo graduated in 2009 and is working as a Reportage by Getty Images Photographer. His project focuses on emergency care for people living below the poverty line in Chicago. Many are HIV positive living in squalid conditions.

Eric Michael Johnson graduated in 2010 and has been working on the subject of healing since he was a student. His project explores the intimate relationship between hospice care and the elderly, specifically how nurses take on the work of doctors in some rural areas without access to physicians. The work contains video as well as stills.

Ramon Ruiz Sampaio graduated in 2012 and is continuing his project on Parkinson’s disease, which he began as a student. The project focuses on one man’s bout with the disease, told through close-up, heart-wrenching black-and-white photographs. Sampaio hopes to continue this work in Mexico and make a comparison with the health care system there and in the U.S.

The Rita and Alex Hillman Foundation Fellowship was created in 2012 by the Hillman family to support emerging photographers who have recently graduated from ICP. The Fellowship was open to ICP alumni from the graduating classes of 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012 in each of the full-time programs: the ICP-Bard MFA Program in Advanced Photographic Studies, the OneYear Certificate Program in General Studies in Photography and the One-Year Certificate Program in Documentary Photography and Photojournalism.