LanguagesGetty Images has announced that Canon Ambassador Paolo Pellegrin and Alex Majoli – both Magnum Photos photographers - have been selected as the first two photojournalists to receive grants for 2009 from a record number of over 215 proposals received from 37 countries.
Pellegrin and Majoli will each receive a $20,000 grant and collaborative support from Getty Images photo editors to pursue their documentary photography projects. Paolo Pellegrin’s continuing project, ‘Iraqi Refugees’, examines the challenges faced by Iraqis who either have fled to other countries to escape the war, or who have been displaced internally due to ethnic cleansing. Pellegrin explained: “Through the support of the Getty Images Grant I will attempt to complete the picture of what has become of a population since the invasion in 2003 divided their homeland and uprooted their lives.”
Majoli’s ‘Requiem in Samba’ is a project documenting the story of Brazil’s increasingly violent, warring factions within the country. Majoli said: “I’ve been interested in Brazil’s ‘hidden’ internal war for the last 10 years. After living there for two years, I must focus on documenting the country’s poor population, the favelas, the drug traffickers, the AIDS epidemic, its victims and its dead.”
Getty Images has also revealed that the first two student winners in the grants programme are Andy Spyra, a student of Germany's Fachhoshchule Hannover (University of Applied Arts and Sciences), and Maximiliano Braun from the London College of Communications. They will each receive $5,000 as well as editorial support from Getty Images as they pursue their ongoing photojournalism projects.
One of Andy Spyra’s images from his ongoing ‘Kashmir Conflict’ documentary project.
Spyra and Braun were chosen from 46 student proposals from 11 countries, and all the entries were reviewed by the judges: Alice Gabriner, chief picture editor, TIME Magazine; Melissa Harris, editor-in-chief, Aperture Magazine; and Susan Meiselas, a photojournalist with Magnum Photos.
Aidan Sullivan, vice president photo assignments for Getty Images, commented: “In such difficult times, these grants become an important lifeline for the international photographic community, enabling the recipients to complete their unique projects and bring them to the world’s attention.”
Spyra will continue his ‘Kashmir Conflict’ project examining the impact of the prolonged conflict between India and Pakistan on the civilian population and culture of Kashmir. Braun’s project, ‘Stay With Me’, documents the challenges that families experience when caring for a relative who is suffering from severe brain damage. Braun began this project in South Africa and will use his grant to document the lives of several families in the UK who have been affected by the same difficulties.
Applications are open until 15 May 2009 for three more Getty Images professional grants and two more student grants – the recipients of these will be announced in September 2009.
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