OSI Documentary Photography Project Distribution Grant Winners Announced

The Open Society Institute's Documentary Photography Project has announced the recipients of the winter 2005 Distribution Grant competition to encourage new ways of presenting documentary photography to the public. This grant enables photographers, who have completed a significant project on issues of social justice, to present the work to the public in innovative, unconventional ways. The aim is to ensure that the work gains critical exposure and also has the greatest chance to stimulate advocacy. Each photographer must collaborate with another entity to distribute the work and advocate for social change.

The following photographers were selected:

• Lynn Johnson, in partnership with arts organizations in Pittsburgh, will present her project "Hate Kills" to the public through indoor and outdoor exhibits, a catalogue, workshops, and a website to initiate a community-wide conversation about prejudice and intolerance.
• Ken Light—in partnership with public libraries in West Virginia, the town of Northfork in West Virginia, and the University of California Press—will create and distribute multimedia kits based on his project "Coal Hollow," to encourage civic participation.
• Laurie McGinley will work with El Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen in El Salvador to conserve and create a database of the museum’s collection of 38,000 photographs documenting the Salvadoran civil war.
• Daniel Morel, in partnership with Circles of Change, will host exhibitions in Haiti and New York, which will serve as the focal point for discussion groups aimed at enabling Haitian Americans and Haitians in Haiti to address their past and collaborate toward a positive future.
• Eugene Richards will produce a multimedia DVD to accompany his forthcoming book A Procession of Them: The Plight of the World’s Mentally Disabled. Richards will continue to work with Mental Disability Rights International and his publisher, Trolley, to distribute the DVD.

For more information on the photographers, please see the Distribution Grantee list.