Note: The Documentary Photography Project does not support film. For information on grants for documentary filmmaking, please contact the Sundance Institute, an OSI grantee in Los Angeles, California.
In 2003, the Open Society Institute launched the Documentary Photography Project. Through exhibits, workshops, grantmaking, and public programs, the project explores how photography can shape public perception and effect social change. The Documentary Photography Project supports photographers whose work addresses social justice and human rights issues that coincide with OSI’s mission.
The most prominent activity of the Documentary Photography Project is the Moving Walls exhibition series, an artistic interpretation of obstacles such as political oppression, economic instability, and racism—and the struggles to tear those barriers down. Launched in 1998, this group photography exhibition is shown at OSI offices in New York City and Washington, D.C., cultural and educational institutions in Baltimore, Maryland, and other locations.
The Documentary Photography Project awards grants to individual photographers through two programs:
Distribution grants are awarded to individual photographers who—in partnership with an NGO, advocacy organization, or other entity—propose creative ways to distribute completed bodies of work and use photography as an advocacy tool. Since 2005, 28 distribution grants have been awarded through an annual competition.
Production grants are awarded to photographers from Central Asia, the Caucasus, Afghanistan, Mongolia, and Pakistan to produce a discreet body of work on a social justice or human rights issue affecting one or more countries in the region. Grants are combined with mentorship by internationally recognized photographers.
The Documentary Photography Project’s other grantmaking activity includes production grants to organizations, as well as small discretionary grants awarded on a case-by-case basis to projects with broad impact in the photographic community.
Through the "Photography As Advocacy" public-forum series, the project explores how photography can be used to shape policy and perception, and to advocate for social change.
From 2006–2008, OSI organized an international tour of seven past Moving Walls photographers in the Middle East and North Africa in partnership with OSI’s Middle East & North Africa Initiative. At each tour location, the Documentary Photography Project worked with local partners to organize a concurrent exhibition by a local photographer and provided a free training workshop for local photojournalists. OSI’s Network Debate Program offered youth media workshops to high school students in each exhibition location, using Moving Walls for the curriculum.
Past support for photography production came from the following OSI programs: the Individual Project Fellowships Program, Project on Death in America, the Soros Justice Media Fellowships, and the Katrina Media Fellowships.
In 2007, the Documentary Photography Project presented Moving Walls at OSI offices and cultural and educational institutions in New York, Washington, D.C., and Baltimore.
In addition, the project, in partnership with OSI’s Middle East and North Africa Initiative, continued its international tour of Moving Walls at cultural venues in Beirut, Damascus, Aleppo, and Cairo. At each venue, the core exhibition was shown alongside local photographers Rania Matar and Randa Mirza (in Beirut), Nadim Ado and Bassam Diab (in Damascus), Nazem Jawesh (in Aleppo), and Osama Dawod and John Perkins (in Cairo). The workshops for local professionals and youth were organized in partnership with OSI's Network Debate Program, Al-liquindoi, Arab Image Foundation, Espace SD, Mustafa Ali Gallery and Art Foundation, Le Pont Art Organization, and Contemporary Image Collective.
In 2007, distribution grants were awarded to support Breaking the Silence, Wendy Ewald, Leora Kahn, Tim Matsui, and Jonathan Torgovnik.
Production grants were awarded to The Aftermath Project and the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography.
