Getty Images awards $130,000 worth of photography grants
- Text by Andrea Kurland
Long-term photojournalism projects should be respected as a gift – an entry point to the depths of human existence. They take years of personal sacrifice to produce and are consumed in a matter of moments, but the message they carry can last for all time.
To help support those working to bring us closer to the source, Getty Images has awarded $130,000 worth of photography grants for editorial and portrait projects that carry a journalistic significance as part of the Visa Pour l’Image Festival in Perpignan, France.
Among those to receive a $10,000 grant for their work in photojournalism is Ohio-born photographer Krisanne Johnson, who’s long-term project on South Africa’s Post-Apartheid youth looks set to deepen over the coming year to cover life at every level of society.
Krisanne’s South African work, The Born Frees, is a natural follow-up to the time she spent in Swaziland producing I Love You Real Fast. Featured in Huck 46 – The Documentary Photography Speciall II – alongside a personal essay in which Krisanne reveals the questions that drive her work – it’s a coming-of-age portrait of the lives of teenage girls who are dealing with, but not defined by their battle with HIV.
So how did the two projects connect? Says Krisanne: “I’d been to South Africa in the late ’90s. It had been a meaningful experience to see a changing post-apartheid generation take shape. I had done a study abroad there and an internship. My plan was to return to visit friends and to chase love. But during an African language fellowship course in grad school, an assignment led me to research Swaziland – a country almost surrounded entirely by South Africa. The more I read, the more I couldn’t stop thinking about it.”
Other photographers to receive a Getty grant include Giulio di Sturco, for his work on the Ganges, William Daniels, who’s been documenting a year of conflict in the Central African Republic, Laura Boushnak for her work on women in the Middle East, Jordi Busqué for his project on The Mennonites of Bolivia, and Juan Arredondo, who’s been documenting the child soldiers of Colombia.
Read Krisanne Johnson’s essay in Huck 46 – The Documentary Photography Special II, out September 8.
Subscribe now to ensure you don’t miss another issue.
You might like
“I didn’t care if I got sacked”: Sleazenation’s Scott King in conversation with Radge’s Meg McWilliams
Radgenation — For our 20th Anniversary Issue, Huck’s editor Josh Jones sits down with the legendary art director and the founder of a new magazine from England’s northeast to talk about taking risks, crafting singular covers and disrupting the middle class dominance of the creative industries.
Written by: Josh Jones
Free-spirited, otherworldly portraits of Mexico City’s queer youth
Birds — Pieter Henket’s new collaborative photobook creates a stage for CDMX’s LGBTQ+ community to express themselves without limitations, styling themselves with wild outfits that subvert gender and tradition.
Written by: Isaac Muk
The suave style and subtle codes of gay San Francisco in the ’70s
Seminal Works — Hal Fischer’s new photobook explores the photographer’s archive, in which he documented the street fashion and culture of the city post-Gay Liberation, and pre-AIDS pandemic.
Written by: Miss Rosen
The stripped, DIY experimentalism of SHOOT zine
Zine Scene — Conceived by photographer Paul Mpagi Sepuya in the ’00s, the publication’s photos injected vulnerability into gay portraiture, and provided a window into the characters of the Brooklyn arts scene. A new photobook collates work made across its seven issues.
Written by: Miss Rosen
Joe Bloom’s View From a Bridge
More stories, more human — The artist and creator of the vertical video generation’s most loved storytelling platform explains the process behind creating the show, and the importance of bucking trends.
Written by: Isaac Muk
When David Wojnarowicz became Arthur Rimbaud
Arthur Rimbaud in New York — In 1978, the American artist and his friends donned masks to pay tribute to the French poet, who was born a century before him. Miss Rosen traces the differing yet parallel lives of the queer revolutionaries.
Written by: Miss Rosen
