OSI Distribution Grant 2009

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The OSI Documentary Photography Project provides grants to encourage new ways of presenting documentary photography to the public.

Traditional media offer limited opportunities for presenting documentary photographs in a way that creates a meaningful and lasting impact on the communities or issues addressed in the images. The Open Society Institute Documentary Photography Project is offering a grant to documentary photographers who have already completed a significant body of work on issues of social justice to collaborate with a partner organization and propose new ways of using photography as a tool for positive social change.

All photographers must have another entity (such as a nonprofit, NGO, or community-based organization) that will work with the photographer to design an innovative distribution strategy that targets specific communities and advocates for social change. The partner must engage with the photographer to accomplish these goals—and not just fund or publish the project.

Grants of $5,000 to $30,000 will be awarded.

Deadline : June 19, 2009.

More information on the website

The 2008 Distribution Grant Winners :

Arthur Robinson Williams, Lisa Tuttle, Lori Grinker , Lori Waselchuk, Yasmine Eid-Sabbagh.

Yasmine Eid-Sabbagh, to partner with the Arab Image Foundation, to curate photographs taken by Palestinian youth living in Burj El Shamali refugee camp and create a permanent archive of the work, as well as an outdoor exhibit that will tour five Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan. $23,000.

Lori Grinker, to partner with the Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility, and present—to 10 high schools in the U.S.—an exhibit, multimedia piece, and study and action guide that address the experiences of Iraqis forced into exil. $21,000.

Lisa Tuttle, to partner with The Dirty Truth Campaign, to curate photographs taken by residents of six neighborhoods in Atlanta, Georgia, and create street corner installations within these neighborhoods in order to organize local residents around issues of displacement, gentrification, and disinvestment in their communities. $23,000.

Arthur Robinson Williams, to partner with the American Medical Student Association, to utilize photographs from the "My Right Self" project to educate health care students and professionals about transsexual and gender-variant individuals. $15,000.

Lori Waselchuk, to partner with the Louisiana-Mississippi Hospice & Palliative Care Organization, to curate "Grace Before Dying," a photography exhibition on Angola Prison's hospice program, and tour the exhibit to correctional facilities in Mississippi and Louisiana to encourage the integration of hospice programs as part of prison healthcare. $25,000.

The 2007 Distribution Grant Winners :

• Wendy Ewald will repatriate photographs made by Innu children in 1969 and distribute, locally and provincially, new images made in collaboration with the Innu nation.
• Leora Kahn will exhibit in Rwanda photographs and interviews with 25 Hutu rescuers during the 1994 Rwandan genocide to foster reconciliation and peace-building between Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda.
• Tim Matsui will conduct speaker engagements as part of a multimedia presentation in Seattle public schools that aims to create a dialogue on the lasting effects of sexual violence on individuals and communities.
• Breaking the Silence will exhibit “Israeli Soldiers Talk About the Occupied Territories,” photographs and testimonies from ex-Israeli soldiers in Boston and Philadelphia.
• Jonathan Torgovnik's “Intended Consequences: Genocide Mothers, Children of Rape, ”a chronicle of women and their children who were born out of rape during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, will tour U.S. colleges and universities.

Grantee list

2009, Grant, OSI Documentary Distribution Grant, Yearl