2015 Inge Morath Award Winner Announced

The Inge Morath Foundation and The Magnum Foundation are pleased to announce the recipient of the 2015 Inge Morath Award. Each June, the winner of the Inge Morath Award is selected by the membership of Magnum Photos during the annual Magnum meeting. The Award of $5,000 is given by the Magnum Foundation, in cooperation with the IM Foundation, to a woman photographer under the age of 30, to support the completion of a long-term documentary project. The recipient of the 2015 Inge Morath Award is Danielle Villasana (US), for her proposal “A Light Inside”. The finalist for the IM Award is Sofia Valiente (US), for her proposal “Miracle Village”.

Born in Texas, Danielle Villasana double-majored in photojournalism and Spanish at the University of Texas, graduating in 2013. In 2014, she co-founded Everyday Latin America on Instagram, which forms part of The Everyday Projects, a movement founded by Peter DiCampo and Austin Merrill to combat stereotypes in traditional media. She is an alumna of the Eddie Adams Workshop, and was an attendee at the 2015 New York Portfolio Review. She is currently based out of Lima, Peru.

For her proposed project for the Inge Morath Award, Villasana writes: “In Peru, a country with a highly machismo, conservative, religious and transphobic culture, transgender women are extremely marginalized and discriminated by society. Persecution begins early at home and school, causing them to abandon their families and studies.” A Light Inside aims to combat stereotypes of transgender women as hyper-sexualized objects, and explores the complexities of gender identity, pain and rejection.

Villasana will use the Inge Morath Award to create more stills and collect interviews for transgender education and community engagement collaborations. “I believe it’s important to work with them not only so that their voices are included but also as a way to empower them through self expression” Villasana writes. Via a low cost pop-up outdoor exhibit in Lima, transwomen will also have an opportunity to speak to majority of Limeños, who may not be able to purchase a book, have access to a gallery or internet. Sofia Valiente is a US photographer, whose “Miracle Village” documents the lives of 12 individuals in a community in South Florida, home to over 150 sex offenders. “Everything in the village is transparent: everyone knows the worst of each other” writes Valiente. Founded five years ago by a Christian ministry, the village seeks to help individuals that have no place to go when they leave prison. The proposals of Danielle Villasana, Sofia Valiente, and selected other applicants will be presented in IM Magazine during 2015/16, launching in September ’15. A total of 81 submissions were presented to the Magnum Foundation, prepared by the Inge Morath Foundation, who also participated in the selection. The winner was selected by the members of Magnum Photos on July 16th, 2015 following the annual Magnum meeting.

PRESS RELEASE

Inge Morath – Masquerades & Enoc Perez – Cut Shapes May 7 – June 13, 2015

Danziger Gallery is pleased to present a two-person show of photographs by Inge Morath and photo collages by Enoc Perez. Created half a century apart, both works share a sense of humor, an interest in concealment, and a delight in cutting and making shapes out of paper.

Inge Morath (1923 – 2002) and artist Saul Steinberg (1914 – 1999) engaged in a unique collaboration by having friends and acquaintances don his paper bags drawn with fantastic faces and then posing them for her photographs. In a delightful series of individual and group portraits taken from 1959 to 1963 the images convey both humor and an unnerving psychological depth. We may not know who is beneath each bag, but we seem to know the type they are playing. Between Morath’s deadpan style and Steinberg’s flights of fantasy they created a veritable encyclopedia of attitudes, postures, and mannerisms. Continue reading Inge Morath – Masquerades at Danziger Gallery →

The Inge Morath Award, 2015

The Magnum Foundation and the Inge Morath Foundation announce the 14th annual Inge Morath Award. The Award of $5,000 is given to a female photographer under the age of 30, to support the completion of a long-term documentary project. One Award winner and up to two finalists are selected by a jury composed of Magnum photographers and the director of the Inge Morath Foundation. Inge Morath was an Austrian-born photographer who was associated with Magnum Photos for nearly fifty years. After her death in 2002, the Inge Morath Foundation was established to manage Morath’s estate and facilitate the study and appreciation of her contribution to photography. Because Morath devoted much of her enthusiasm to encouraging women photographers, her colleagues at Magnum Photos established the Inge Morath Award in her honor. The Award is now administered by the Magnum Foundation as part of its mission of supporting the next generation of socially-conscious documentary photographers, in cooperation with the Inge Morath Foundation. Past winners of the Inge Morath Award include: Shannon Jensen (US, ’14), for A Long Walk; Isadora Kosofsky (US, ’12), for Selections from “The

Three” and “This Existence;” Zhe Chen (China, ’11) for Bees; Lurdes R. Basolí (Spain, ’10) for Caracas, The City of Lost Bullets and Claire Martin (Australia, ’10) for Selections from The Downtown East Side and Slab City; Emily Schiffer (US, ’09) for Cheyenne River; Kathryn Cook (US, ’08) for Memory Denied: Turkey and the Armenian Genocide; Olivia Arthur (UK, ’07) for The Middle Distance; Jessica Dimmock (US, ’06) for The Ninth Floor; Mimi Chakarova (US, ’06) for Sex Trafficking in Eastern Europe; Claudia Guadarrama (MX, ’05) for Before

the Limit; and Ami Vitale (US, ’02), for Kashmir.

IM Award Guidelines:

1. All submissions must be made online using the interface at Submittable.com.
2. The Award is given to a female photographer to complete a long-term documentary project. Proposals and accompanying material should present only the project for which the Award is being requested.
3. All applicants must be under the age of 30 on April 30th, 2015 (in other words, if April 30th is your birthday, and you’re turning 30, then you’re no longer eligible to submit a proposal).
4. Presentation guidelines and image specifications are given at our Submittable.com page.

Submit here: https://ingemorath.submittable.com/submit All IM Award submissions must be received by April 30th, 2015.