Yar Mail #65: Good Photography, Good People, and a Grant or Two
After serving on the Women Photograph Leica Grant jury, I’m sharing this year’s winners and a few other favorites.
This article was originally published in Yar Mail. Below, you’ll find an abbreviated version of the original newsletter.
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Hi again. Happy fall? The monsoons have broken El Paso’s summer heat a bit, and more cool fall weather feels like it’s around the corner.
I’m just back from the Lincoln National Forest in New Mexico for a project I’m working on for ProPublica. I’m off to Austin for Trib Fest later this week.
But this newsletter isn’t about forests or Lincolns, it’s about grants and good photography. The winners of the Women Photograph Leica Grant were announced a few weeks ago. I was on the jury for the grant earlier this summer and wanted to use this newsletter to share some highlights. Women Photograph (WP) is an organization rooted in advocating for equitable hiring in the visual journalism industry and supporting the photography careers of women and gender-marginalized photographers. A number of this newsletter’s subscribers are members. It’s a pretty neat org. They’ve got cool merch, put out a book, and have built a massive photographer database. I’m not a member for one main reason, but I do suggest that people who are interested check it out.
In its 10th year, this year’s WP grant awarded $10,000 each in photography project support to three photographers: Fatma Fahmy, Caroline Gutman, and Yixi Tian. Fatma Fahmy’s project, “When Absence Takes Hold,” explores how the environmental degradation of Lake Qarun in Egypt has reshaped the lives of women in nearby fishing communities. Caroline Gutman’s “The Invisible Force” documents the nuclear industry’s long-term environmental and social consequences. Yixi Tian’s “Veiled by Cloud and Mist” focuses on Miao medicine practitioners in the mountainous villages of Qiandongnan, Guizhou, China.
All three are outstanding projects, and I’m looking forward to seeing how they develop. But selecting just three from around 1,200 applications was a process that unfortunately left out a lot of great work. So, from the almost 400 applications I personally reviewed as part of the grant, here are some other highlights I thought you should check out. The following are just a small, random sampling of some of the projects that stood out to me.
Johanna Maria Fritz
Johanna Maria Fritz is a photojournalist based between Germany and Ukraine whose work focuses on war, human rights, and social issues. Her submission focused on drone warfare in Ukraine, exploring how the rapid evolution of commercially available drones has transformed the experience of war. What was once a defined frontline is now a vast, constantly surveilled kill zone, where movement can be detected and targeted within minutes. Her intimate and unsettling photographs explore the psychological toll of living under permanent observation.
Natalia Favre
Natalia Favre is a documentary photographer and visual storyteller based between Cuba and Argentina whose work explores migration and social change across Latin America. Her project, The Weight of Absence, examines the families and communities left behind by Cuba’s exodus, as parents, children, and generations are separated by migration. Longtime newsletter subscribers may remember this story Favre worked on for Rest of World.
Kitra Cahana
Kitra Cahana is a documentary photographer and filmmaker whose work explores social, anthropological, and spiritual themes. Her project, Nogales/Nogales, examines the two cities that share a name while existing on opposite sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. Building on her long-term work documenting migration through Mexico, Cahana’s photography places Nogales, Arizona, alongside Nogales, Sonora, revealing connections and distinctions in the dual communities.
Luisa Dörr
Luisa Dörr is a Brazilian photographer whose work centers on women, identity, and intimate portraiture. Her project, Escaramuzas, focuses on the female horsewomen of Jalisco, Mexico, championing the charrería tradition. Dörr’s evocative and colorful imagery touches on costume and performance, showing the strength and vulnerability of the women who now carry this important cultural tradition forward.
Lisa Bukreyeva
Lisa Bukreyeva is a photographer based in Kyiv, Ukraine, whose work explores youth, identity, and the emotional realities of life during war. Her project, 18–24, looks at a generation coming of age under Russia’s full-scale invasion, exploring how young Ukrainians maintain a sense of identity while living with uncertainty, loss, and the constant presence of war. The project asks what remains of youth when dreams are shaped by survival.