Recipients of inaugural US$15,000 Reportage Grants announced
Getty Images has recently awarded a total of US$45,000 to three photographers (US$15k each) to pursue long-term documentary projects of both personal and journalistic significance. The winning photographers will continue work exploring the impact of globalisation on small communities, daily life in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the conflicting beauty and isolation of an Aerotropolis.
Getty Images Reportage Grants form part of the wider Getty Images Grants program, which supports the world’s photographic and photojournalism community tell important world stories.
The recipients
Rose Marie Cromwell (King of Fish)
Since the early 2000s, Coco Solo residents have fought to be relocated. After years of fruitless meetings with housing authorities, some community members resorted to frequently closing the road that leads to Coco Solo and the port terminals. These protests sometimes led to violent clashes with police. Eventually the Panamanian government sold the Coco Solo land to one of the port authorities, which then began to lobby for relocation.
Under pressure from the port, the government finally began building a new housing project for Coco Solo residents in nearby Buena Vista. After years of stalled construction, it felt like a miracle when the last families were relocated from Coco Solo to Buena Vista.
Through this work, Cromwell brings to attention the effects rapid globalisation has on small communities.
Giulio Di Sturco (Aerotropolis, The Way we Will Live Next)
An Aerotropolis is a model of a city driven by a combination of business needs and state control. These cities capture the breadth of themes running through civilisation, from the re-appropriation of the natural landscape to our unquestioning faith in technology, set in the backdrop of architecture refined in elegance and logic. It is the post-modern city. A vision, or perhaps a mirage, it is a window of opportunities to solve the dilemma of modernity: reconciling economic development and sustainable growth.
Di Sturco aims to capture the scale and beauty of an Aerotropolis while simultaneously capturing the alienation and loneliness of its inhabitants.
Leonard Pongo (The Uncanny)
The Uncanny documents daily life in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. From following local TV news teams on the ground, to covering weddings, parties, church services, and locally relevant events, the project authentically depicts the Congolese experience.
Pongo’s focus for this project is to alter the usual narrative of the country by providing a better understanding of everyday life in the Congo.
Honorable mentions
Venetia Menzies (21st Century Bedouin)
21st Century Bedouin is a documentary project which explores how nomadic life in Algeria has been radically transformed over the past century, through events such as French colonisation, civil war, and mass urban migration.
Heba Khamis (Banned Beauty)
This project looks at violent expressions of motherly love developed in response to cultural and socioeconomic phenomena in Cameroon. Specifically, through the practice of breast ironing, mothers and grandmothers massage their young daughter’s breasts with hard and heated cooking objects in hopes of delaying their breast development until a more appropriate age is reached, with the belief that this will make them appear less attractive to men.
The judges
The Getty Images Reportage Grant recipients were selected from a global pool of over 450 entrants, judged by an esteemed judging panel.
- David Guttenfelder, Photographer, National Geographic
- Zara Katz, Independent Photo Editor
- Wayne Lawrence, Documentary Photographer
- Amy Pereira, Independent Photo Editor & Curator
- Vaughn Wallace, Senior Photo Editor, National Geographic