Rather than awarding $40,000 to a single photographer, this year’s W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography is doing something different: it will award five photographers each with $10,000.
The W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund has been supporting photographers engaged in compassionate photojournalism since 1979. The global pandemic prompted it to modify its approach for 2020, preferring to spread its annual Eugene Smith Grant between several photographers rather than awarding it to an individual. It’s now doing the same for 2021 with submissions closing at the end of May.
Applications are not cheap, unfortunately $50, and the date for applying for a waiver has now passed. You’ll need to send a biography of 250 words, a project description of around 600 words, and up to 40 images that demonstrate your vision and capacity to deliver your project.
GRANTEE
Mary F. Calvert is committed to using photography to affect meaningful social change and is known for producing work on underreported and neglected gender-based, human rights issues.
For the past eight years, Calvert has been focusing her journalistic attention on the relegation and abuse of women and men in the U.S. armed forces. This work made her a finalist in Feature Photography in the 2020 Pulitzer Prizes and has won numerous honors, including the World Press Photo Contest award and the Cliff Edom New America Award. The work has been supported by grants from Getty Images, the Alexia Foundation, and the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund. Calvert was awarded the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award twice and is a 2017-2018 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow in Photography.