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Fellowship
En Foco is proud to announce the ten winners of its 2023 Photography Fellowship Program who were selected from a pool of 92 applicants. Each person will receive a $1,000 award.
Designed to support photographers of color who demonstrate the highest quality of work as determined by a photography panel of peers and industry professionals, this year’s awardees include Àngel Añazco, Tanya Bindra, Ryan Frigillana, Mateo Ruiz Gonzalez, Samantha Box, Pratya Jankong, Thalia Juárez, Ashley McLean, Eduardo L Rivera, and Ana Vallejo.
The Fellowship initiative affirms En Foco’s ongoing commitment to the financial support of artists of color, and serves to inform exhibition organizers and curators of an existing pool of quality under recognized artists.
Àngel Añazco is an Ecuadorian-American Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist with a background in Fine Arts and a major passion for concept-based projects. She earned a bachelor’s degree in photography from Parsons The New School of Design and has a wealth of knowledge in photography production and aesthetics and her work is inspired by themes of identity and life experience.
Tanya Bindra is a Brooklyn-based documentary filmmaker and photographer with 10+ years of production experience reporting on news, conflict, and migration in over 25 countries across North and Central America, Africa, South Asia, and Europe. Fluent in English, French, German, and basic Spanish, Bindra is a graduate of McGill University.
Samantha Box is a Jamaican-born, Bronx-based photographer. She holds an MFA in Advanced Photographic Studies from ICP-Bard College and a certificate in Photojournalism and Documentary Studies from the International Center of Photography. Her art has been exhibited at venues throughout the country and is in the collection of the Museum of Fine Art Houston. Box will be in residence at the Visual Studies Workshop (Rochester) in 2023.
Ryan Frigillana, a native of Iligan City, Philippines who lives in Uniondale, NY, is a visual artist working with photography and image archives. Informed by his experiences as a first-generation American, his work reflects on labor, faith, memory, and home in relation to the Filipinx diaspora. He is the author of two monographs. He earned a BFA in Photography and Related Media, Fashion Institute of Technology, 2020.
Pratya Jankong is a moment capturer who started taking photographs about eight years ago. A Queens-based photographer, Jankong considers himself a functional photographer, covering everything from architecture and interior shots to weddings and food photography. Before moving to NY, he worked as a photographer in Thailand for five years. He earned a bachelor’s in horticulture from Kasetsart University in Thailand.
Thalia Juárez is a Manhattan-based journalist and visual storyteller. She specializes in photojournalism and is interested in covering stories about migration, labor, access to healthcare, education, and environmental justice. She is the photo editor of The Guardian US and earned a bachelor’s in journalism from the University of Texas at Austin.
Ashley McLean is an artist (b. 1996, Queens, NY) who received her B.F.A. in Photography and Video from the School of Visual Arts. In 2021, she briefly studied in the Fine Arts program at the Universität der Künste Berlin. McLean’s work calls attention to the notions of masculinity, Black identity, and subjectivity in art. In 2022, she was honored as a laureate in Dior’s Photography and Visual Arts Award for Young Talents.
Eduardo L Rivera is a Rochester-based artist. He is a Visiting Assistant Professor in Photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology. His education includes Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, Certificate in Teaching; Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Madison, ME; Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, MA, M.F.A., Photography; and Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, B.F.A., Photography.
Mateo Ruiz Gonzalez is a Brooklyn-based self-taught and emerging photographer (b.1989) in Bogota, Colombia. He has been living in NYC since 2013 and working in the hospitality industry. His photography has been featured by The Pulitzer Center, National Geographic, and CNN Latino. He is the co-founder of Antics Publications, an independent publishing house based in Bogota, Colombia and New York City.
Ana Vallejo is a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary mixed media artist and conceptual documentary photographer from Colombia. Having a background in biology, the root of her practice is researching trauma, brain plasticity, and human consciousness. She earned a 2019 New Media Narratives Certificate program at ICP and is a recipient of the Mary Ellen Mark Memorial Scholarship and Director’s Fellowship.
In addition to a fellowship grant of $1,000, each Fellow will be provided with professional development and networking opportunities. Their work will also be featured in a May/June 2023 group exhibition at the WallWorks gallery in the Bronx. Printed and online editions of Nueva Luz, En Foco’s signature photographic journal, also planned for publication in May/June 2023.
En Foco is a non-profit organization that nurtures and supports contemporary fine art and documentary photographers of diverse cultures, primarily U.S. residents of Latino, African and Asian Heritage, and Native Peoples of the Americas and the Pacific. Since it was founded in 1974, En Foco has been an outspoken leader and advocate for the equitable support and access to resources for photographers of color. It has a distinguished itself through its sustained commitment to providing its primary constituency and the communities they represent financial support, public programming, information services and cultural advocacy initiatives.
The En Foco Photography Fellowship is designed to support photographers of color who demonstrate the highest quality of work as determined by a photography panel of peers and industry professionals. The Photography Fellowship Program will award 10 Fellowships at $1,000 per artist, a Fellowship Group Exhibition, and feature the Fellows in A Nueva Luz publication printed and online editions.