En Foco Announces the Fall/Winter 2023 Nueva Luz: New Works Featuring Five Past New Works Awardees Terry Boddie, Andre Cypriano, Koyoltzintli, Paccarik Orue, and Wendy Phillips, Curated by Tarisse Iriarte

Bronx, NY - En Foco is pleased to announce the fall/winter issue of Nueva Luz featuring five photographers who were previous New Works awardees, a program that began in 1996 (now the En Foco Photography Fellowship).

En Foco’s Curator-at-large, Tarisse Iriarte, organized the issue and selected seven images to represent each artist. As part of En Foco's efforts to activate its Archives, this issue highlights past participants of the New Works Program. Working in diverse photographic mediums, including cyanotypes, tintypes, mixed media, collage, color film, and gelatin silver prints on paper and fiber, the work of Terry Boddie, André Cypriano, Koyoltzintli, Paccarik Orue, and Wendy Phillips engage the themes of memory and migration in different ways.

Boddie's work addresses the tension between memory and history and the space that exists between using collage, cyanotypes, and mixed media, layering images with text and symbols. Cypriano's gelatin silver prints document societies that are at risk of being eradicated, adopting anthropological and historical approaches. Koyoltzintli states that her artistic practice is rooted in the land, a concept explored through images produced during her time living in the Andes with her elder and teacher, Mama Matilde, and the power of story sharing and communal living.

Orue is represented by the series El Muqui (2012–19), a project titled after a folkloric character in the Andean mines that pays tribute to the Peruvian community of Cerro de Pasco and the environmental disasters they have endured. Wendy Phillips's black and white photographs printed on fiber affect a hazy, dream-like quality, with images primarily drawn from her project documenting La Costa Chica, a community in Mexico comprised of people of African descent that demonstrates the far reach of the Afro-Atlantic slave trade.

Nueva Luz: New Works draws from the wealth of artists in the New Works award that spanned 1996 to 2014, a program that was designed to offer financial and professional resources to photographers of color in order to support their creative practices. As former executive director Miriam Romais writes: "Unlike many other competitions at the time, it [New Works] was free to enter and provided an honorarium, our staff’s professional support as thought-partners as needed. . . It was intended to spotlight underrecognized and undervalued photographers of historically-neglected communities who were creating work that fell outside of commercial mainstream art trends."

Two essays complement the work: "New Works: a light that shines" by Miriam Romais chronicles Ms. Romais's time on staff at En Foco, providing a first-person account on the development of the New Works program. "Cultural Archives and Community Legacies" by Oscar J. Rivera reflects on the function and power of community archives as well as the effect of exclusionary practices. He focuses on En Foco's Archives which encapsulate fifty years of artists of color self-advocating against the backdrop of mainstream American photography, a landscape that is historically overwhelmingly white and male.

In 2016, the New Works award transitioned into what is now the En Foco Photography Fellowship, an annual award given to ten artists who are provided with a feature in this magazine, an exhibition, and an honorarium, continuing the original goals of New Works.

Nueva Luz: New Works will be available online for free and in print for purchase on December 1, 2023. To read past issues of Nueva Luz online, visit www.enfoco.org/nueva-luz-archive.

About Nueva Luz

Launched in 1985, Nueva Luz is an ongoing art publication that addresses social and cultural issues at the fore of photography, with a particular emphasis on narratives from artists of color. From its inception, the publication’s mission was to advance the professional status of contemporary photographers of diverse backgrounds and cultures.