En Foco is proud to announce the 15 recipients of the 2026 Artist Fellowship, marking eleven years of one of the nation’s only fellowships dedicated exclusively to lens-based artists of color. Now in its 11th year, the En Foco Artist Fellowship continues to serve as a vital platform for elevating stories that are often excluded from dominant cultural narratives rooted in personal history, migration, community, and creative resistance.
Selected from a highly competitive pool of applicants from across New York State, this year’s 15 fellows represent a visionary cohort working across photography and interdisciplinary visual storytelling.
The 2026 En Foco Artist Fellowship recipients are:
Duane Bailey-Castro, Tyler DeHaarte, Morrison Gong, George Grullon, Damien Jackson, Jeffrey Jin, Antonia Kuo, Katherine Miranda, Sibyl Montoya, Horatio Nguyen, Kanishka Puri, Johnny Ramos, Omar Soto Corrales, Vasudev Vashisht, and Michael Young.
Antonia Kuo, Antonia Kuo (b. 1987, New York, NY) lives and works in New York, NY. She received an MFA from Yale University, her BFA from School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and Tufts University, and a one-year certificate from School of the International Center of Photography. Her work has been exhibited at Chapter NY, New York; James Cohan, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Project Native Informant, London; Adams and Ollman, Portland; the Frye Art Museum, Seattle; Each Modern, Taipei; Metropolitan Museum of Manila, PH; among others. Kuo has been an artist-in-residence at Mass MoCA, Vermont Studio Center, The Banff Centre, and was a MacDowell Colony Fellow. Her work is included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Frye Art Museum, Seattle; and the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara, Indonesia.
Damien Jackson is a photographer whose work sits at the intersection of documentary practice, family history, and Caribbean diaspora memory. Born in Gibraltar and raised between St. Vincent and Brooklyn, he photographs Black life with an ethic of dignity and emotional precision, building images that function as both record and offering. His practice is rooted in everyday ritual, the gestures, rooms, and gatherings where lineage is carried forward, and in the belief that photographs can be portals between what is visible and what is felt. Working primarily in black and white, Damien focuses on intimacy, gesture, and atmosphere, often returning to themes of elders, inheritance, and communal care. His ongoing bodies of work explore how families hold one another through joy, migration, and loss, and how place shapes identity across generations.
Duane Bailey-Castro, Born in Manhattan and raised in the Bronx, Duane Bailey-Castro specializes in urban landscape and travel photography. His main focus is on the fifteen little-known Harlem River Bridges which span New York City’s Harlem River. His project examines these spans both as engineering marvels and symbols of the Bronx and Upper Manhattan that bring attention to and celebrate a part of the New York City landscape that has a long history of being overlooked and under-resourced. At the same time, he loves to travel abroad photographing places on the periphery where beauty and history intersect. His work has been exhibited at the Bronx Children’s Museum, the New York Public Library, Montefiore Medical Center, the Bronx Documentary Center, and the Bronx Historical Society. He is the recipient of a 2020 Bronx Recognizes Its Own (BRIO) Grant and a 2019 Community Arts Grant from the Bronx Council on the Arts.
George “GnP” Grullon (b. 1981, Brooklyn) is a Puerto Rican and Dominican photojournalist based in East Harlem, New York City. His work is rooted in the belief that everyday lives deserve careful, lasting documentation. After studying Arts and Music Technology at Queens Borough Community College, he turned to photography while reflecting on the absence of images from his own childhood—an absence that revealed how easily working-class stories disappear. Grullon approaches photography as both record and reclamation. Whether documenting urban running culture, street basketball tournaments, or neighborhood rituals, he works close to his subjects, honoring the dignity, rhythm, and pride within communities often overlooked. His images function as living archives intimate, unguarded, and grounded in place preserving the beauty and complexity of the streets that shaped him.
Horatio Baltz Nguyen is a New York–based filmmaker and photographer whose work spans documentary, narrative, and commercial projects. His practice blends the vernacular of fiction and nonfiction storytelling, resulting in hybrid works that fuse the staged and the authentic while speaking to nuanced, lyrical truths. He is first-generation Vietnamese American born in Pascagoula, Mississippi. Nguyen has been commissioned to create works by the Chronicle of Higher Education, has received mentorship from Werner Herzog and Alec Soth. Nguyen had his first solo exhibition of photographs and films at the Antenna Gallery in New Orleans in 2025. He is a 2026 recipient of the New York State Council on the Arts grant. His work has been seen in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and as a Vimeo Staff Pick.
Jeffrey Jin (b. 2003) is a queer, Chinese American photographer born and raised in the suburbs of Houston within the confines of a pious Chinese church community. Since taking their first Are You Gay? quiz at age twelve, religious faith has been supplanted with a devout interest in both analog and digital photography as tools to strengthen identity and preserve what’s most familiar: their family and queer friends of color. In doing so, their work unveils narratives surrounding upbringing, corporeality, and a deep affection for the physical and virtual landscapes they inhabit—from Texas’ winding roads to the Internet’s deep caverns.
Their images have been featured in publications including Dazed, Far- NEAR, and Nowness Asia, and have been exhibited across Houston, New York City, and Shanghai. They are an alumnus of the Eddie Adams Workshop, a member of Diversify Photo, and graduated from the University of Texas at Austin.
Johnny Ramos is a filmmaker and photographer whose documentary practice explores identity, migration, and cultural memory within Puerto Rican and diasporic communities. Working across portraiture and nonfiction film, his work focuses on everyday life as a site of resilience, history, and cultural continuity. Through intimate portraits and observational imagery, Ramos creates visual narratives that challenge reductive representations and foreground the dignity and vitality of Puerto Rican life on the island and across the diaspora. Ramos holds a BFA in Film Production and has produced several short documentary films centered on lived experience and community storytelling. He serves as Youth Media Director at Downtown Community Television Center (DCTV), where he mentors emerging filmmakers and supports youth in developing their voices through media production.
Kanishka Kanishka is an NYC based artist and writer who explores interspecies collaboration and ecological entanglement as ways to reimagine archives, kinship, and knowledge. She completed her MFA in Photography from Parsons School of Design in 2025 and was born in Chandigarh, India. Her works have been shown at Baxter St, Elizabeth Street Garden, Photoville, Stephen Kellen Gallery in New York, Lishui Photography Festival in China, Jaipur Arts Week in India, and Women Made Gallery in Chicago. Her essays have been published in Back Matter Magazine, Rukhmabai Initiatives, MFA Exhibition Catalogue, and Columbia Journal (2026). Kanishka has shared her research through artist talks at Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia and the Saas Fee Summer Institute of Art in Paris. She will speak about her new research at the national photography conference organised by the Society of Photographic Education in Atlanta in March 2026.
Katherine Miranda (they/he) is a Latinx, non-binary multidisciplinary artist and educator born, raised and based in the Bronx. By transforming objects and photographs collected from their family, community and nature, Miranda creates a mythological archive that honors their familial, communal and ancestral histories. Their belief that our histories hold the key to reimagining our futures acts as a constant guide in their practice, often encouraging others to explore their own legacies. Taking part in several fellowships over the years from the Van Lier Fellowship with Wave Hill (2021) to the AIM Fellowship with the Bronx Museum (2022) to the Create Change Fellowship with The Laundromat Project (2023) they have constantly endeavored to learn, document and preserve their family’s stories – reimagining them into alternative worlds.
Michael Young: Bronx-Based Street and Documentary Photographer Brooklyn-born and raised, Michael Young is a street and documentary photographer with a keen eye for light and shadow. His passion translates into captivating imagery that captures the essence of his surroundings. Michael’s work transcends the frame, finding recognition in esteemed publications like The New York Times, ZEKE Magazine, Black and White Magazine, and the third edition of Jill Jonnes’s “South Bronx Rising.” He has showcased his talent at prestigious venues like The Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Wilmer Jennings Gallery at Kenkeleba, The Bronx Documentary Center, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, and Photoville, further solidifying his artistic presence.
Morrison Gong works across photography, writing, performance and moving images. They invoke the body as a site of haunting, wounding, conjuring and myth making. Communing with insects, aquatic creatures, relics, ceremonial objects, Gong fuses their practice with erotic, animistic and funerary rites. Their video works have been shown at Anthology Film Archives, Microscope Gallery, Vox Populi Gallery, CROSSROADS presented by San Francisco Cinematheque, Hong Kong Arthouse Film Festival, among others. Their photography has been featured on It’s Nice That, Whitehot Magazine and Lomography Magazine. Gong has taught photography and interdisciplinary practice at the International Center of Photography and The School of Making Thinking. Gong received a BFA from Parsons School of Design and an MA at the New School for Social Research. They are based in Queens, NY.
Omar Soto photographer and multi-media artist is predominantly inspired by Queer, Trans, Black and Indigenous (QTBI) people; often reflecting on their own life experiences as a binary individual growing up in a historically conservative state (Arizona). Soto’s practice explores how human connection and means for survival are commodified during one’s upbringing, often out of reach. Through photography, Soto uplifts their community and subverts cultural and social marginalization imposed on people with multiple intersecting identities. The surreal and escapist themes in their work, often conveyed through props, costumes, and light manipulation, are in direct response to the ongoing political struggles in the Southwest. Receiving multiple awards including the 2024 Lehmann Emerging Artist award with the Phoenix Art Museum and American Photographic Artist’s 2025 LGBT Grant.
Sibyl Montoya (b. 1993, Bronx, New York) is a transsexual Guatemalan- American photographer and sound artist residing in Brooklyn, New York. Her work explores memory, trauma, and integration through embodiment practices. She holds a BA in Cultural Anthropology from Hunter College. Her work has been exhibited and published in Public Space One, Iowa City (2020); Foley Gallery, New York (2020); BBA Circle Gallery, Berlin (2020); Valentine Editions, UK (2021 2022); Spew VIII, Tokyo (2017); IMA Next, Tokyo (2020); and Blank Wall Gallery, Athens (2021). She currently works as a freelance fashion photographer, collaborating with emerging brands (Euphorbia, Pru, & D Second) as well as established labels (Arc’teryx, C’H’C’M, & Engineered Garments).
Tyler DeHaarte is a Brooklyn-based Black photographer and visual artist whose work explores the space between memory, history, and lived experience. His practice lives in the tension between what’s been documented and what’s been erased. Working primarily in photography, he creates layered narratives that center Black life with intimacy, nuance, and care. Rooted in collaboration and ongoing dialogue within the Black community, DeHaarte builds images through trust-based relationships with people who share lived experiences similar to his own. He received his BFA in Photography from Parsons School of Design and was a 2021 Hopper Prize Finalist. Grounded in long-term engagement, his practice blends research, lived testimony, and environmental observation to expand the visual archive of Black life in America. His work contributes to contemporary efforts to reframe Black presence within American visual culture.
Vasudev Vashisht is an artist-ethnographer and researcher of Indian origin based in New York. His work transforms photography into a living collaborative medium through darkroom experimentation, ecological interventions, participatory workshops, and community-centered fieldwork. Vashisht’s practice foregrounds how human activity shapes the lives of nonhuman beings and environments, revealing histories of extraction and the pressures of a changing climate held within the earth. He has facilitated workshops with communities across the Peruvian Andes and on Governors Island in New York. Vashisht’s work has been exhibited at CreateCOP29, Photoville Festival, and Baxter St, Camera Club of NY and internationally, in India & China. Vashisht is a recipient of the SPE Student Imaging Award and recently completed his MFA in Photography from Parsons School of Design, NY. When not covered in soil or darkroom chemistry, he is trying to convince airport security that the soil-filled bags in his luggage are ‘art supplies.’
In 2024, En Foco reorganized its artists’ services programs into a single, more expansive program, designed to meet the evolving needs of artists working across a spectrum of lens-based and time-based practices. This expanded format allows the organization to support more artists and to provide a more robust suite of resources, including curatorial mentorship, publication support, and sustained professional development opportunities.
Each fellow receives a $1,500 award and individualized guidance and will be featured in a culminating group exhibition scheduled for Fall 2026 at Inspiration Point in the Bronx, as well as in a special edition of Nueva Luz, En Foco’s flagship photographic journal. These platforms offer not only expanded visibility but also deeper engagement with the curatorial process and the opportunity to be part of En Foco’s growing legacy of artist support and advocacy.
The 2026 exhibition and special Fellowship issue of Nueva Luz will be curated by Scherezade García, an internationally recognized painter, printmaker, and installation artist whose work examines history, collective memory, cultural politics, and migration. With exhibitions and biennial presentations spanning the Americas and beyond, García brings a deeply informed and globally engaged perspective to this year’s Fellowship program.
En Foco extends its heartfelt gratitude to the 2026 Artist Fellowship panelists: Africa Heiderhoff, Jesús Lopez-Jensen, and Jarrett Murphy. Their insight, rigor, and care shaped this year’s selections and reflect En Foco’s ongoing dedication to equity in the arts.
“At a moment when so many histories, identities, and lived experiences are being challenged, erased, or politicized, supporting artists who document the complexity of our communities feels more urgent than ever,” said Oscar J Rivera, Managing Director of En Foco. “Since its inception, the En Foco Fellowship has supported artists whose work not only expands the field of lens-based art but also helps preserve cultural memory, deepen public dialogue, and remind us of the power of imagemaking as both resistance and connection.”
As En Foco enters its 52nd year of operation, the organization remains rooted in its founding principles, by artists for artists, with a commitment to building a more inclusive and vibrant future for photography, media, and visual culture.
Honorable Mentions
En Foco also extends special recognition to the following artists whose applications advanced to the second round of deliberations. Their work reflects the strength, originality, and powerful vision present throughout this year’s applicant pool:Erin Baptiste, Nadia Bongo, Kim Borrero, Chris Cook, Roberta Dorsett, Moselle Douff, Ana Espinal, Safia Fatimi, Yi Hsuan Lai, Juyon Lee, Ashley Melendez, Alexis Montoya, Andina Marie Osorio, Charlie Perez-Tlatenchi, Nina Tanujaya, Sofie Vasquez, Frank Wang Yefeng, and Misra Walker.
In recognition of the incredible depth of talent reflected across all submissions, artists named as honorable mentions, and many others who applied will receive priority consideration for upcoming En Foco opportunities, including future exhibitions, publication in Nueva Luz, professional development programs, and potential funding support. En Foco remains committed to cultivating long-term relationships with emerging and established artists whose work aligns with our mission.
The 2026 En Foco Artist Fellowship
The En Foco Artist Fellowship Program is designed to support artists of color who utilize lens-based mediums and digital media technologies in their creative processes. This program merges the previous Photography Fellowship and Media Arts Fund, creating a unified opportunity for photographers and media-based artists in New York State. While applicants may apply to both forms for photographers and media-based artists, they will receive only one award. Submissions will be evaluated by a panel of industry professionals, ensuring recognition for the highest-quality work.
The Artist Fellowship Program will:
En Foco is highly regarded for its leadership in support of artists of color and for its advocacy role in addressing issues related to cultural equity and access. Previous Fellows have gained access to numerous opportunities beyond the fellowship.
Artists who apply for the Fellowship, may also be considered for future issues of Nueva Luz, Exhibitions, and other opportunities.
WHO CAN APPLY – PHOTOGRAPHERS
WHO CANNOT APPLY
NOTIFICATION
Selected applicants will be notified in Spring 2025. En Foco seeks to select 10 photographers to be a part of the En Foco Artist Fellowship Program. Selected photographers will be featured in a 2025 group exhibition and the 2025 Nueva Luz publication, as well as receive a $1,500 honorarium and professional development and networking opportunities.
SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS
WHO CAN APPLY – MEDIA BASED ARTISTS
WHO CANNOT APPLY
NOTIFICATION
Selected applicants will be notified in Spring 2025. En Foco seeks to select 5 media-based artists to be a part of the En Foco Artist Fellowship Program. Selected artists will be featured in a 2025 group exhibition and the 2025 Nueva Luz publication, as well as receive a $1,500 honorarium and professional development and networking opportunities.
SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS
The application is currently closed. Please join our mailing list to receive updates on out 2025 Application cycle. Mailing List.
If you have questions about he Fellowship pease contact: Fellowship@enfoco.org