ICP Students Honored by the Alexia Foundation
Sarah Blesener, a 2016 graduate of the ICP’s Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism program, is the recipient of The Alexia Professional Grant for Toy Soldiers, which documents rising nationalism among youth in the U.S. Blesener was the recipient of The Alexia award of excellence student grant just last year, in 2016. She is the third Alexia student winner to go on to win a professional grant, but the first to do it so quickly, immediately following the year of her student win.
Monica Jorge, a current student in ICP’s Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism program, is The Alexia 2017 Student Grant winner for My Grandfather's Keeper, which documents the sacrifices of senior spouses unprepared for caretaking. It shows the experience of her own grandmother in her transitioning from being a wife to being a nurse.
The Alexia 2017 competition was judged by National Geographic Society Digital General Manager Keith Jenkins, VII Photographer and Filmmaker Ed Kashi, and Independent Photography Director, Curator and Consultant Amy Pereira. Mike Davis, the Alexia Tsairis Chair of Documentary Photography at Syracuse University, moderated. This was the 27th year The Alexia Foundation has awarded grants to photojournalists.
The Alexia Foundation helps photojournalists give voice to those who go unheard, foster understanding and expose social injustice. It was founded to celebrate and remember Alexia Tsairis, who was killed in the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988.