Community Grant Shortlist
We received hundreds of applicants for the grant and choosing just 5 for you to vote on is always difficult. Please ensure that you read all of the shortlisted submissions before casting your vote for your favourite.
Shortlist
The below text are the reponses provided when we asked 'Tell us what's special about your project'.
It's Back, Batteries Included - Corey Joon Clark
Nearly every day that I go outside, at least one or two people will approach me and comment on my hair. Some are cautious, not wishing to offend. Some stare in awe, while others shout from across the street. They come from all backgrounds- black, white, young, old. My hair allows me a brief glimpse into a stranger's life. It instantly disarms them and starts conversations. Often they have a personal connection to it: Unc had hair just like mine when he was my age, could I spare him some? Miss Weems rode with the Panthers back in the day. One man in an airport said, "What's good afro? It's back, batteries included!"
Lately, I've begun asking for a photo of them. They seem puzzled at first, like I had just stolen their line. Then, most of the time, they happily oblige.
With this project, I want to compile the names and faces of the strangers that I form a brief connection with into a series of prints punctuated by a self portrait. It is not just a celebration of black hair, but of people and their willingness to connect with a stranger, even for just a moment.
The photo community grant would be incredibly helpful, as darkroom materials continue to grow in price. I would like to print these on MGFB Classic Matt paper. I am committed to this project even if I do not receive the grant.
Ashes from the Riverbed - Sebastián Machado Batanero
Ashes from the Riverbed is an ongoing project that explores memory, mourning, and belonging through camera-less analogue photography. Using water from the irrigation canals surrounding my family home in Chiconcuac, Mexico, I create watergrams—photograms submerged directly in the riverbed—where light, time, and organic matter interact with Ilford fiber paper to produce unique, unrepeatable images.
The house and its surrounding landscape hold eighty years of layered history, from Spanish exile after the Civil War to natural disasters and generational change. The irrigation canals where these images are made carry more than water—they carry the ashes of our dead, the sediment of time, and the quiet traces of those who came before. This project is an attempt to read that material archive through the senses—touch, light, and the palimpsests of sediment—and to give form to invisible histories through analogue processes.
What makes this project special is that it can only exist through analogue materials. The direct contact between paper, water, and natural elements creates a material dialogue that no digital process could replicate.
With this grant, I would be able to continue the series using different sizes and finishes of Ilford and Kentmere paper, experiment with new exposures, and prepare the work for an immersive installation. I also plan to offer workshops and talks in this small rural town, sharing the possibilities of analogue photography as a way to connect with family histories, memory, and loss in poetic and powerful ways. Your support would not only sustain a deeply personal body of work, but also bring analogue practice into dialogue with community, ritual, and shared storytelling.
The Secret Afterlife of Lepidoptera - Gray Parsons
The Secret Afterlife of Lepidoptera is the working title for my ongoing collaboration with the Spencer Entomological Collection at the University of British Columbia (UBC); since June, the curator, Karen Needham, and her team have kindly allowed me access to the main collection – a vast subterranean archive of preserved insects in display cases – and research stations typically hidden from the public.
With the curation team’s aid, I’ve been able to make 4x5” images of the lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) with my field camera. This project sits at the intersection of scientific, archival, and artistic personal practices; thus far, I’ve approached the project as a form of scientific documentation. Large format macro photography has allowed me to produce images of whole specimens at a fidelity beyond the research team’s specialized digital equipment, a cartographic view of the specimen rather than several microscopic images of specific areas. In addition, I think there’s a parallel between the photographic negative and the pinned butterfly: both are delicate, transparent things, ephemera preserved for our study. In a sense, I’m working to build a dual archive of butterflies captured on film that I’m free to imbue with emotional meaning and bring out into the world for display, unlike the specimens themselves.
My motivation for this project is personal and rooted in grief: the artist is a young widow. My partner – my better half and my best friend – passed suddenly last May. The pinned butterfly runs far deeper than a memento mori or metaphor for our queer love, although those are on my mind. My partner introduced me to these creatures via framed specimens on their apartment walls— a Blue Morpho by the entryway, a Scarlet Swallowtail in the lacy curtain-light of their window, and, of particular importance as it was their favorite, a small, transparent pink butterfly by their bed.
I would wake up on white winter mornings, warm under sheets with my sleeping partner, and just gaze at the butterfly’s rosy hindwings. A little brass plaque on the frame read “Cithaerias pireta” (its common name, I later learned, is the Blushing Phantom; too potent a metaphor for the absence now in my life). I lack the words for how important that little pinned creature has become for me since my partner left. Pursuing this interest of theirs has become a means of keeping our connection alive; when I visit the archive and photograph these specimens, my memory of them feels much warmer, much closer, as though they’re in the room. I can nearly ask them which specimens they prefer. This work has shown me an afterlife in this world: a cured death, if just for a little while.
Likewise, the lepidoptera no longer flap their delicate, scaly wings; their lives, too, were cut terribly short. Still, they contribute to the world, either via scientific research towards ecological conservation or stirring the rare visitor by their mere preservation. But I cannot speak for the dead. Despite the solace I find in this field, I am deeply ambivalent about it. While I think the specimens have an afterlife in this archive, we’ve cruelly killed these beautiful wild creatures in the name of preservation. Even applying concepts of beauty and cruelty unsettles me, as they are concepts foreign to the specimens themselves. For this reason I’m composing my images as objectively as possible, with only two elements: the specimens themselves, wings splayed, and the steel pins we ran through their abdomens. They lived, and we loved them; they died, and we love them still. It’s not their fault that we cling to what remains.
Support for this project would see a massive increase in its scale. Currently, I am quite limited by the number of sheets at my disposal, and I have had to curate my images for large gaudy specimens that I am certain will render well in black and white. Even then, I have had to limit myself to a single photograph per species. With this grant, I would expand this project into the smaller, subtler genera and out to the typically unseen back end of the collection, such as still lives of the research facilities and/or portraits of the teams responsible for the collection’s upkeep. In addition, I’d like to put some of the grant towards fiber darkroom paper (11x14” or larger) to print images for display and/or fundraising for ecological conservation or queer community support networks. Thank you for your consideration.
Dirt Roads - Jeff Slater
I want to photograph dirt roads and the things, people and scenes that can found on dirt roads. Maine is slowly paving over it’s roads and it will be a matter of time before a very large portion of its roads will be paved. I grew up on a dirt road and have fond memories, and a few sad ones, and feel we should caoture these fading opportunities while we still can.
Carrot Crunchers - Tom Porter
Carrot Crunchers” is a lens based exploration of underground music in the West Country. Despite the connotations of life in rural England being sleep and operating at a much slower place than urban powerhouses like London, Birmingham and Manchester, the provincial south west is home to more than its fair share of DJ’s, producers, MC’s, singers, party promoters, sound systems, festival organizers, set designers, record shop owners and every other vital role in the grand ecosystem of underground music and events. This project will focus on figures based in Gloucestershire, Bristol and Wiltshire to demonstrate the disproportionate contribution that this region has on the events world in the rest of the country.
What makes this project special, is its ability to re-write the myths that underground dance music has to be made in the capital to be deemed legitimate and that those of us who are based in the west country are cider guzzling carrot crunchers. Culture is alive and well in the west country, with a thriving community of makers and doers who contribute to the whole Eco-system of underground music on offer out here in the sticks.
The inspiration for Carrot Crunchers comes from spending the last decade making a project about sound system culture. When conducting interviews I would hear sound system crews from various cities be described by those from London as a “Country Sound” despite being based in Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester and other cities. Sound System Culture is the backbone of all underground dance music, so naturally this London-centric thinking has carried on as the many genres such as Jungle, Garage, Dub-Step & Grime have progressed.
The first award of 2025 went to Jessi Bowman for her project FLATS Teen Summer Camp
Her prize has been shipped and we'll be hearing from her soon on her progress.
Other projects shortlisted this time were:-
Adrian Piedra - Nijar's Two Sides
Dasha Lavrinienko - Meadows
Phil Cantor - Alter Egos
Weiting Zhang - Futbol Callejero
The second award of 2024 went to Marta Arjona for her project ePhemeral
Her prize was shipped last year and we'll be hearing from her soon on her progress.
Other projects shortlisted this time were:-
Reed Mattison - Jackson Nights, Walking
Alana Garces Punset - Japan Legacy
Karim Khourrou - Kan ya Makan (Once upon a time....)
Susnata Karmakar - Homeless - a series Inspired by Suella Braverman
The first 2024 grant was awarded to Lucho Davila for Fanesca which studies how immigration alters traditional folklore
You can read more about the progress that he is making with this project here
Other projects shortlisted this time were:-
Mountains: The Inner Path - Eduardo Almeida
Our Kids - Portraits of people with LGBTQ+ parents.- Paula Smith
The Places I (Long To) Go - Megan Sinclair
I am not an embarrasment - Xoliswa Ngwenya
The Q3 2023 Grant was awarded to Anni Kay and her project Hulme Loonies.
Annie shared an update with us on this project, which yu can watch here
Other shortlisted project were:-
Gary Dougherty - Lifesavers
Alan J Kent - The Afghan Street Camera
Emillio Daniel. - Hikayat Kain (Tale of Cloth)
Mia Kraitsowits - Loved Skins
The Q2 2023 Community Grant was awarded to Federico Pestilli for his project Extinct
Read more about how his project is going in our online magazine
The other projects shortlisted for this award were:-
Jack Moyse - What it's like (being me)
Megan Henderson - Locos Non Profit
Yang Zhou - Mapping J. R. R. Tolkien's England
D. M. Terblanche - I Should Have Burnt More Cars
Our Q1 2023 Winner was India Mae Alby with her project on the London Rollerskating Scene.
We shipped her prize in April 2023 and in August 2024 she shared this post with us showing how the project was coming to life.
The other projects shortlisted for this award were:-
Asian Representation in Hollywood - Marcus Ubungen
Black Women Rising UK - Noam Friedman
The Woman: Veiled - Jason and Amanda Ray
Don't Touch My... (DTM) - Zai
Our Q4 2022 Winner was SAM BATLEY with his project 'One Day at a time boys'.
His prize shipped in January and he updated us at the end of 2023 about his project working with a community of men from a recovery centre in Liverpool.
The other projects that you voted on for the 2nd award were:-
Dogs from Darkness - Ted Smith
Cost of Living Crisis - Kieran Doherty
Queering Rural Spaces - Sarah Stellino
The resistance of native corn in rural Mexico City - Diego Hernadez
Untie the Knot - Clare Park
Our Q3 2022 Winner was ANDILE BHALA with his project 'Related to the Pavement'.
We shipped his prize to him in November. You can read more about his project capturing faces of Soweto/JOZI in our magazine and check out some of his work on his Instagram
The other projects that you voted on for the 1st award were:-
Tragically beautiful - Anna Melnykova
f.64 - Savannah McCauley
Accessible Landscapes - John Emery
Just Sitting - Kasia Murfet
A Role Model for Me - Molly Kate