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En Foco Newsletter : December 2022
Arts and Entertainment
December 13, 2022
From: En FocoNueva Luz: Wendel White | Mentor Issue Vol. 26.2
En Foco is pleased to announce the new Nueva Luz Mentor Issue featuring twenty-five black-and-white images from Wendel White's series Schools for the Colored (2002–2010) selected and curated by photographer Dawoud Bey, and an interview with White by artist-curator, Victor Davson.
The issue explores White's eight-year project Schools for the Colored. White writes: "I began making photographs of historically African American school buildings during the very first weeks of the Small Towns, Black Lives project more than twenty-five years ago. In this project, I began to pay attention to the many structures and sites (also making photographs of places where buildings once stood) that operated as segregated schools."
This "Mentor Issue" of Nueva Luz highlights a seminal body of work while presenting new critical writings and insights from three luminaries who continue to influence the direction of contemporary image-making today. Since the launch of Nueva Luz in 1985, there have been only four other mentor issues representing artists who are essential voices in the discipline of photography.
Featured Artist
Wendel A. White was born in Newark, New Jersey, and grew up in New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. He holds a BFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts, New York, New York, and an MFA in photography from the University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas. White is the recipient of various awards, fellowships, and artist residencies, including a grant from Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, a Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography, Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge Massachusetts, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in Photography, and three artist fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, among others. His work is held in numerous museum and corporate collections. He currently holds the title of Distinguished Professor of Art at Stockton University, Galloway, New Jersey. Recent projects include Manifest: Thirteen Colonies (2009–present), Red Summer (2011–2019), Village of Peace: An African American Community in Israel (2004–2006), Small Towns, Black Lives (1989–2002), and others.
Curator
Dawoud Bey is considered to be one of the most significant American photographers working today. He began his career in 1975 with the series Harlem, USA, which was later exhibited in his first one-person exhibition at The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, New York, in 1979. His work has since been the subject of numerous exhibitions and retrospectives at museums and galleries worldwide for four decades, including his 2020 retrospective exhibition Dawoud Bey: An American Project which traveled to multiple museums. His work is included in museum collections in the United States and abroad. Bey is the recipient of various awards and fellowships, including the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Fellowship and National Endowment for the Arts, among other honors. Bey holds an MFA from Yale University School of Art, New Haven, Connecticut, and is currently Professor of Art and a former Distinguished College Artist at Columbia College Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, where he has taught since 1998.
Essayist
Victor Davson was born in Georgetown, the capital of what was then British Guiana. He received a BFA degree from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York, and in 1983 co-founded Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art in Newark, New Jersey, to support artists outside the mainstream. He has exhibited widely throughout the United States and abroad, including solo exhibitions at The Center for Contemporary Art, Bedminster, New Jersey, Bertha V.B. Lederer Gallery, State University of New York, Geneseo, New York, Wilmer Jennings Gallery at Kenkeleba, New York, New York, Berrie Center Kresge and Pascal Galleries, Ramapo College of New Jersey, Mahwah, New Jersey, and Akwaaba Gallery, Newark, New Jersey, among others. His work is held in museum and private collections internationally. Davson has been been the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, a Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper Fellowship, and three New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship Awards.
En Foco Media Arts Fund: Works in Progress Initiative
The Third Annual En Foco Media Arts Fund: Works in Progress (WIP) Initiative: $2,000 Support Grant, in collaboration with BronxNet is designed to support New York City based, early career artists of color who engage with Digital Media technologies within their art-making processes. The award will focus solely on works that need support toward the completion of a current work in progress, which demonstrates the highest quality of work and potential as determined by a panel of peers, and industry professionals. All innovative interpretations of Digital Media will be considered, requiring a critical digital aspect in both the process and product. Proposed projects where the final products are photographic in nature are ineligible for funding.
For this opportunity, early-career artists are defined by a 2-9 year artistic working history. Artists who have also applied for the 2023 Photography Fellowship are only eligible to receive one award.
For more information on eligibility and guidelines please visit our website.
We Are Hiring!
En Foco is hiring! Become a part of an organization committed to increasing visibility for BIPOC photographers while creating access to under-served communities.
Positions Available:
Nueva Luz Editorial Consultant
Grants and Development Manager
Curator-At-Large
Memoria Impressa: Posters from the En Foco Archives
As En Foco approaches its 50th anniversary in 2024, the nonprofit dedicated to promoting diversity in photography celebrates its rich history of artists and community with a new poster exhibition inspired by its archives.
En Foco presents Memoria Impressa: Posters from the En Foco Archives exhibition, which chronicles En Foco’s history from 1979 to 1995 through a selection of its exhibition and public program posters. Each poster has a history attached to it, and Memoria Impressa tells part of the En Foco story of collaboration among organizations and engagement within our communities.
The poster collection represents a sampling of the organization’s history of public engagement since the 1970s, including open calls to photographers for mentorship, seminars, and exhibitions. These programs were a collaboration with established photographers, curators, and cultural institutions in New York and Puerto Rico.
For nearly a year, En Foco’s Skowmon Hastanan, Collections Consultant, and Valarie Irizarry, Collections and Archives Manager, have spent valuable time among the documents, photographs, publications, and other objects that have accumulated since the founding of En Foco in 1974 by a collective of Puerto Rican photographers.
On View: December 16, 2022 - February 1, 2023
Opening Reception: Saturday, December 17, 2022 | 6-8 PM
Location: Virtual at enfoco.org and In-person @ KreateHub, 15 Canal Place, Bronx, NY
Opportunities
The Bandung 2023 Residency
The Bandung 2023 Residency, presented by the Asian American Arts Alliance (A4) and The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA), is an opportunity designed to uplift the work of organizers, artists, educators, and waymakers whose practice is intended to foster solidarity between Asian American/Pacific Islander (AAPI) and Black communities. This residency is made possible through the NYS AAPI Community Fund, The Ford Foundation, the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, and the NYC Department of Youth and Community Development.
The Bandung 2023 Residency is seeking 7-10 participants with a range of artistic expression, social justice / social impact expertise, organizing frameworks, and lived experiences for its second cohort.
The Larry Lederman Photography Fellowship
The New York Botanical Garden (NYBG)’s Humanities Institute cordially invites applicants for a nine-month Larry Lederman Photography Fellowship, awarded to an outstanding photographer whose work focuses on gardens or landscapes. The grant is awarded annually to an established or emerging photographer whose work demonstrates excellence and a creative approach to the art of landscape photography.
The application period runs from October 20 through December 31, 2022. The selected Fellow will receive a $20,000 grant disbursed in installments for a nine-month term, March 1 through November 30, 2023, during which time the Fellow will have complimentary access to NYBG’s 250-acre landscape and historic collections.
Zeke Award for Systematic Change
Social Documentary Network (SDN) is proud to partner again with the Foundation for Systemic Change for the second year. SDN will award two photographers the ZEKE Award for Systemic Change and a $2,500 honoraria to recognize their outstanding visual stories documenting systemic changes leading to sustainable solutions to important issues affecting the world today. We are particularly interested in the threat to democracy and solutions to this global crisis as well as related issues including human rights, global health, climate change, migration and refugees, conflict, race and gender, reproductive rights, sustainable farming practices, and others. We look to photographers to educate us as to what issues are most pressing and the change that is being done.
We Are Present: 2020 In Portraits
Now available for pre-order, We Are Present: 2020 in Portraits is a year-long visual account of love, grief, vulnerability, creativity, isolation, communion, determination and faith braided within its narrative. Taking us through one of the most dynamic years in recent history,
Laylah Amatullah Barrayn has assembled a series of tender yet confrontational portraits from her assignment work as a photojournalist and off-duty encounters. Photographed on location in New York, Minneapolis and Louisville, the images are linked chronologically, beginning in the unassuming winter months, transitioning into the devastating onset of a global pandemic in the spring, pivoting into a summer of spirited Black Lives Matter demonstrations, before meandering into a volatile fall election season. The portraits in We Are Present distill the intimacy at play between sitter and photographer echoing the quieter stories adjacent to the main event of 2020.
Blue Sky Gallery 2023 Pacific Northwest Drawers
Blue Sky is now accepting submissions for the 2023 Pacific Northwest Drawers. Photographers from Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia are welcome to apply. There is no application fee to enter.
Blue Sky established the Pacific Northwest Drawers in 2007 to showcase regional contemporary photographers through an annual juried exhibition. Selected work can be viewed in the flat files for a full year at the gallery, or digitally on the Blue Sky website. The online exhibition will remain a part of the Blue Sky digital archive indefinitely.
Lucie Foundation The Portrait Project Take Two
Categories: Self/Portrait, Together as One, Candid, Black & White, Alternative/Abstract
This Open Call will feature 50 photographers that will be displayed in an online exhibition along with a variety of prizes.