With special introduction by Festival guest speakers, Assoc Professor for Photography Jim Ramer, Parsons, New York, USA and Assoc Professor for Photography, Simone Douglas Parsons, New York, USA.
The Alexia Foundation promotes the power of photojournalism to give voice to social injustice, to respect history lest we forget it and to understand cultural difference as our strength – not our weakness.
On the 21st of December,1988, 270 innocent people were lost in the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Alexia Tsairis, age 20, a Newhouse School of Public Communications student at Syracuse University, was one of them.
Set up to honor this young photographer, through grants, scholarships and special projects, The Alexia Foundation supports photographers as agents for change.
At a time when many other resources have dwindled, The Alexia Foundation remains unwavering in its commitment to support photojournalism on academic and professional levels. We strongly believe that there is no stronger force in bringing us closer to the world we inhabit.
This will be a digital projection of the grant winners and the stories they have brought to life. This year's grant winners digital presentation includes:
Aaron Vincent Elkaim is the recipient of the 2016 Professional Grant for Where the River Runs Through which documents and strives to understand the consequences of the Belo Monte Dam Complex, Brazil’s major hydroelectric expansion on the ecosystems, communities and industries within the Amazon Rainforest. Nearing completion, the Belo Monte Dam is the third largest dam in the world. It is displacing over 20,000 people.
The project examines the impacts of the loss of construction employment for local and migrant workers, the growth of collateral industries such as mining, logging, ranching, and agriculture, and most importantly the stories of those who are being robbed of their birthright, the natural world that surrounds them.
Alvaro Ybarra Zavala received a Judges Special Recognition professional award for Colombia, The Parallel State, which documents the reality of a civilian population who live in a hidden Colombia that only knows the reality of sixty years of war.
First Place Student Winner Nathaniel Brunt was awarded the Alexia Grant for #Shaheed, a study of the war in Kashmir, the men fighting in it, and the changing relationship between technology and the representation of conflict. Brunt is a master’s student at Ryerson University.
Student Award of Excellence Grants were awarded to:
José Márquez of Brooks Institute for Próspero, which tells the story of a man who believed in the American Dream and ran for his life across the border from Mexico to the United States to follow his dreams. The project is primarily a documentary film. A video teaser “Marquez - Prospero - Trailer-HD” is included in the materials;
Gabriela Arp of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for Traces, a 360-video virtual reality experience that explores the memories—both real and imagined—of Willie E. White, an 88-year old woman living with dementia.
Sarah Blesener of The International Center of Photography for Chavi, which focuses on a surrogate family of fourteen-year old friends living in the projects in the southern Bronx, exploring issues of boyhood, adolescence, and belonging. The video Blesener-Haven-HD.mp4 is the multimedia piece of her project;
Nick Wagner of Western Kentucky University whose A Migrant’s Mission looks at how one Mexican migrant worker has coped with leaving behind his family for nine months each of the last 13 years.
Followed by Q + A.
Presented by:
