The International Center of Photography is thrilled to announce a new collaboration with CatchLight, acting as an education partner for CatchLight Fellows.

CatchLight is a San Francisco Bay Area–based nonprofit dedicated to visual storytelling and the power of photography to drive social change. The CatchLight Fellowship serves as an incubator—a space to receive financial support, unlock individual potential, and leverage partnerships. Each year CatchLight recognizes three professional photographers who have demonstrated excellence in the novel use of photography to bring awareness to challenging social issues. Each CatchLight Fellow receives a $30,000 grant and then collaborates with a CatchLight partner to complete his or her proposed project. The 2018 Fellows are Aida Muluneh, Carlos Javier Ortiz, and Andrea Bruce.

“There is no one that understands the identification and development of individual photographic vision better than ICP,” says Nancy Farese, CatchLight founder and executive director. “At CatchLight, we identify the best of modern day visual storytellers, and surround them with resources, networks, and leadership support to amplify the reach of their stories. We are so honored to be partnering with ICP to nurture the potential reach and personal growth of these storytellers.”

As an education partner, ICP will provide targeted mentorship, specialized use of facilities, and educational programming as related to the content of the work created. ICP will also provide each CatchLight Fellow with two formal mentorship sessions. The first session will be with Lacy Austin, ICP director of community programs and CatchLight advisory council member, and Jenny Stratton, CatchLight impact and engagement manager, followed by a second with one of ICP’s academic chairs as determined by the genre of the work. CatchLight Fellows will also be given the opportunity to share their work with the ICP community.

“ICP is thrilled to partner with CatchLight and support such exceptional fellows,” says Austin. “As we all share in the mission of visual storytelling for social change, we are better positioned to achieve it when we work together.”

Aida Muluneh: Catchlight Fellowship Project

In creating an expansive workshop and mentorship program, Aida Muluneh seeks to support and promote emerging African photographers in Nigeria, Ethiopia, Uganda, and Italy. As she attempts to interrogate the foreign gaze and also to raise the awareness of the impact of photography in shaping cultural perceptions, participating students will develop their own stories based on what they are confronted with in their own countries, historically or through current depictions in the media. Through her program, Muluneh will also be producing her own collection that explores the relationship between history and images in Africa.

Carlos Javier Ortiz: Catchlight Fellowship Project

In light of recent high-profile shootings in Sacramento, the rest of the state, and the country, Carlos Javier Ortiz’s project Between the Lines presents an examination of the Ferguson Effect, while exploring aspects of trust surrounding police-citizen relations. The artist will create a visual ethnographic short-film that offers an unprecedented look into the lives of residents of Del Paso Heights and South Sacramento affected by the recent spike in violent crimes, and how they negotiate their lives with the police and community.

Andrea Bruce: Catchlight Fellowship Project

In partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, Andrea Bruce’s project Our Democracy seeks to push people to look beyond politics and examine the social conditions that underpin our society, providing a visual record of the state of local democracy at this moment in US history. Throughout the fellowship, Bruce will move and immerse herself in a different community each month, and use visual and audio storytelling to explore experiences and thoughts on contemporary democracy in the United States using Alexis de Tocqueville’s route studying democracy in the mid-1800s. The project also unfolds online, where it will be combined with an interactive map of the journey with multimedia content and data about the community’s social and political involvement.

About Catchlight

CatchLight is a San Francisco Bay Area–based nonprofit that believes that art is vital, transformative, and the highest form of hope. They support artists and create programs that accelerate the social impact of visual storytelling to improve the world by informing how we see and understand each other.

Photography as a tool has never been more accessible, or more valuable, for sharing vibrant stories that evoke empathy across geographies and languages. By advancing the distribution of compelling images from diverse perspectives and investing in the next generation of storytellers, CatchLight can plant seeds of curiosity, dialogue, inclusion, reconciliation, and optimism.