CatchLight Global Fellowship 2022: call for submissions

29 June 2022

Submissions for the 2022 CatchLight Global Fellowship are open until 17 July. A total of four US$30,000 Fellowship Awards are on offer. Made possible through a partnership between the San Francisco-based visual media organisation, CatchLight and MPB.com, the awards act as an incubator for innovative leaders in the visual storytelling field to receive financial support, unlock individual potential, and grow and leverage partnerships.

©Tasneem Alsultan. A group of Saudi women check their phones at a luxury Riyadh hotel in support of Prince Mohammed of Saudi Arabia. Prince Mohammed has actively courted youth as a new constituency to support his programs.
© Tasneem Alsultan, 2021 CatchLight Fellow. A group of Saudi women check their phones at a luxury Riyadh hotel in support of Prince Mohammed of Saudi Arabia. Prince Mohammed has actively courted youth as a new constituency to support his programs.

CatchLight is seeking candidates who look to make a lasting impact and embrace variable challenges as an opportunity to lead the field in creative and innovative ways. In addition to the $30,000 financial award, the Fellowship offers personal development opportunities, impact strategy, and networking support from CatchLight staff and their extended network. Recipients join a community of like-minded Fellows and industry professionals with opportunities for mentorship, education, and speaking engagements.

“The visual language has never been as important to our everyday communication or more powerful, and yet it is increasingly difficult to make a living as a professional visual storyteller, as recently established in the 2022 State of Photography survey, many photographers, especially in expensive cities like LA and New York, are living near the poverty line,” says Elodie Mailliet-Storm, CatchLight’s CEO. “CatchLight looks to build sustainability and resiliency for the field by investing in key leaders committed to impact.”

© Koral Carballo, 2021 CatchLight Fellow. Aleida Violeta Vazquez, Afromexican poet-activist and Afromexican artist Koral Carballo, hang the exhibit, Evidence for a New Generation. The exhibit was the result of four workshops in Costa Chica, Oaxaca, Mexico for Carballo’s project Siempre Estuvimos Aquí (We Were Always Here) and took place during the local visuals seminar put on by Africamericanos in Oaxaca.
© Koral Carballo, 2021 CatchLight Fellow. Aleida Violeta Vazquez, Afromexican poet-activist and Afromexican artist Koral Carballo, hang the exhibit, Evidence for a New Generation. The exhibit was the result of four workshops in Costa Chica, Oaxaca, Mexico for Carballo’s project Siempre Estuvimos Aquí (We Were Always Here) and took place during the local visuals seminar put on by Africamericanos in Oaxaca.

The 2021 Global Fellows were: Koral Carballo, who reveals a deeply textured reality of Afrodescendants in Mexico while teaching communities photo archiving methods to preserve that history; Roopa Gogineni, whose projects in India and the southern United States explore who and why we choose to commemorate and how that creates our collective memories; Bayeté Ross Smith, who explores the untold American history of racial domestic terrorism through his Red Summers project and delves into how appearance shapes our identity; and Daniella Zalcman, who expands her entrepreneurial work at Women Photograph to sustainably improve gender equity in visual journalism.

©Roopa Gogineni, 2021 CatchLight Fellow. In her long-term documentary project, Timepass, Roopa Gogineni draws a portrait of her family’s ancestral village, reflecting on the nature of homes left behind and an India in transition.
© Roopa Gogineni, 2021 CatchLight Fellow. In her long-term documentary project, Timepass, Roopa Gogineni draws a portrait of her family’s ancestral village, reflecting on the nature of homes left behind and an India in transition.

The jury for the 2022 Global Fellowship includes Gael Almeida, regional director for Latin America for the National Geographic Society; photographer Tasneem Alsultan, a 2019 CatchLight Fellow; Lauren Kern, Apple News Editor in Chief; Amanda Minami, education philanthropist, and Azu Nwagbogu, Founder and Director of African Artists’ Foundation. Additional information about the jury can be found here. 

There is no entry fee and submissions can be made via this link. CatchLight Fellows will be announced on 4 October.

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