The Firecracker Photographic Grant
Closed until Summer 2020
The Firecracker Photographic Grant is an annual fund provided to female and non-binary international photographers, to aid in the completion of a documentary photography project.
To celebrate the launch of the 2019 applications, we look back at our previous Grant winners, from 2012 to 2018.
The inaugural Firecracker Photographic Grant was awarded in September 2012 to British photographer Jo Metson Scott for her project ‘The Grey Line’, a sensitive documentation of ‘conscientious objectors’; American and British soldiers speaking out against the Iraq war. The book has since been highly commended and voted one of the best photo books of 2013 by Time, The Observer, The Telegraph and Empire.
The 2013 Firecracker Grant was awarded to Nadia Sablin, a Russian photographer living between Brooklyn and St. Petersburg, was chosen for her documentary project ‘Two Sisters’, a story of the photographer’s unmarried aunts who live a traditional and ancestral life in rural northwest Russia, tied to the land and to each other. The project allows us insight into their lives, relationship, identity and the place they call home; each photo offering quiet contemplation on time, aging and family relationships. Since then, Sablin has been awarded a fellowship by the New York Foundation for the Arts and exhibited the project at the Bellevue College in Washington State.
In 2014 Armenian/American photographer Diana Markosian was awarded the Grant for her highly acclaimed project ‘Inventing My Father’, the photographers personal attempt to reconnect with her absent parent. By combining her own visual storytelling ability alongside archival and found photography, Markosian delivers a truly authentic and moving account, resulting in her viewer’s total absorption in, and commitment to, the story. The judges also commended British photographer Sian Davy for work exploring the artist’s daughter, ‘Looking for Alice’.
In 2015 Spanish photographer Lua Ribeira was awarded the Grant for her visually stimulating exploration of British dancehall culture. Her project, Noises in the Blood, explores the celebration of a ritual, embracing consciously the exotic stereotype towards a different culture looking at the immediate differences between photographer and the subject, opening a dialogue about the English Jamaican women and their manners within a shared context.
In 2016 Belgium photographer Sanne De Wilde won the Grant for ‘Island of the Colourblind’, an incredible visualisation of the true story of the residents of Pingelap, an atoll in the Pacific Ocean, who have been affected by the hereditary condition of colourblindness.
2017’s Firecracker Photographic Grant was awarded to Brazilian photographer Carolina Arantes for her work ‘First Generation’, an on-going project about the first generation of Afro-French women of France which speaks about national identity, mixed origins and culture deeply anchored in its historical tradition.
American photographer Peyton Fulford received the 2018 Grant for her work “Infinite Tenderness” exploring her own lived experiences growing up queer in the religious American south.
Introducing the 2019 Judges
Adama Delphine Fawundu is a Visual Artist, Author & Educator born in Brooklyn, NY to parents from Sierra Leone and Equatorial Guinea, West Africa. In 2018, she completed her MFA in Visual Arts at Columbia University. Ms. Fawundu was awarded a 2018 Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Grant, a BRIC Workspace Artist in Resident and is currently an artist-in-resident at the Center for Book Arts. Ms. Fawundu is a co-founder and author of the book and journal MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora. She was included in OkayAfrica’s “100 Women making an impact on Africa and its diaspora” in 2018. Her work has been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, the International Center of Photography, the Lagos Photo Festival, and the Brighton Photo Biennial 2016 (UK), among others. 2019 solo exhibitions of her works include The Sacred Of Isis at the African American Museum of Philadelphia and Crush Curatorial in Chelsea, NYC.
Genevieve Fussell is a Senior Photo Editor at The New Yorker, where she commissions and produces original photography for the weekly publication and curates photography for newyorker.com. She has collaborated with a range of photographers globally including fine artists, portraitists, conceptual photographers and photojournalists on topics as varied as politics, arts, pop culture, sports and religion. Among collaborators are Roger Ballen, Edward Burtynsky, Katy Grannan, Marilyn Minter, Alec Soth and Paolo Roversi. Prior to joining The New Yorker, Genevieve worked at VII Photo, the international collective of photojournalists, where she oversaw the agency archive of more than 80,000 artist assets and produced a range of exhibitions in partnership with photographers, publishers and cultural institutions. Genevieve’s work has been honored in American Photography, the PDN Photo Annual and by The Society of Publication Designers. She has juried various photography competitions including American Photography 32, Red Hook Labs New Artists II and Unseen Photo Festival’s Meijburg Art Commission.
Skinder Hundal is Director of New Art Exchange and has been in post since the establishment of the organisation in September 2008, positioning NAE as one of the leading contemporary art spaces in the UK. Hundal has successfully led the organisation through a significant period of growth and development, achieving a strong reputation for creating and producing high quality adventurous art, bringing international level culturally diverse art to Nottingham and the UK. He is passionate about supporting new talent, and creating ‘incredible encounters’, rethinking and improving how the arts and cultural ecology works so that the value of art and culture is shared as widely as possible and is inclusive at all levels. He has successfully delivered many complex, large-scale projects, including the historic EM15 Midland’s Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2015 – Doug Fishbone’s Leisure Land Golf, Culture Cloud, a flagship NESTA Digital Arts R&D project, British Art Show 7, Nottingham and Here There & Everywhere international programme as part of Re-Imagine India. Hundal has commissioned significant artists including Akram Zaatari; Zarina Bhimji; John Akomfrah; Hetain Patel; Zineb Sedira; Hurvin Anderson and Sonia Boyce. Several commissions have been bought by Tate, Arts Council Collection and international museums. Hundal is also Executive Producer for NAE’s international programme partnership Here, There & Everywhere which spans South Asia, South Korea, Africa, the Caribbean and Middle East.Hundal is Executive Producer and Artistic Director for UK’s original Mela Festival in Nottingham.
Mirjam Kooiman is an art historian and curator at Foam Photography Museum Amsterdam, where she is responsible for a number of exhibitions among which Persijn Broersen & Margit Lukács – Point Cloud, Old Growth, Ai Weiwei – #SafePassage, Paul Mpagi Sepuya – Double Enclosure, Daisuke Yokota – Matter, Awoiska van der Molen – Blanco, and the traveling Foam Talent exhibitions of 2015 and 2016. In 2017 she also initiated a series of collaborations with photography platforms in Mexico, Nigeria and Indonesia in Foam’s project space Foam 3h, in order to create an exchange of cultural knowledge on photography discourses worldwide. She is currently researching how photography can relate to virtual realities, artificial intelligence, gaming and online experiences. Mirjam holds a BA in Art History and a MA in Curating Arts and Culture from the University of Amsterdam, with a special interest in postcolonial approaches in the arts and museum studies. She previously served as a curator-in-training at Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum. She has also written for L’Internationale, Something We Africans Got, Migrant Journal, and she is a regular contributor to Foam Magazine.
Candice Lawler, Photo Director at Apple, is a Los Angeles based photo director and photographer currently leading photography across Apple services marketing. A native New Yorker, Candice studied photography at The School Of Visual Arts. With more than 15 years experience as an art director, photo editor and portrait photographer her work has been featured in RollingStone, Billboard, NYLON, Vogue, Spin, MTV, and BET Networks.
