Deadline Extended. Apply by July 24.
Four $30k Fellowship Awards
No Entry Fee
As the world emerges to a new and ever-changing normal, CatchLight — a San Francisco, CA-based visual media organization that leverages the power of visual storytelling to inform, connect, and transform communities — knows that visual storytellers have a critical role in reflecting this fluid landscape while also seizing opportunities to advance representation and dialogue. As the 2022 CatchLight Global Fellowship opens, CatchLight seeks candidates who look to make lasting impact and embrace these variable challenges as an opportunity to lead the field in creative and innovative ways.
Made possible in part through a partnership with MPB.com, the CatchLight Global Fellowship, accompanied by a $30,000 award, serves as an incubator — a place for innovative leaders in the visual storytelling field to receive financial support, unlock individual potential, and grow and leverage partnerships. The Fellowship cultivates a vibrant community of creative thought leaders whose work will be enhanced by collaboration, personal development and networking.
The CatchLight Global Fellowship application, which has no entry fee, can be submitted here. The four selected Fellows will be announced on October 4, 2022.
“The visual language has never been as important to our everyday communication or more powerful, and yet it is increasingly difficult to make a living as a professional visual storyteller, as recently established in the 2022 State of Photography survey, many photographers, especially in expensive cities like LA and New York, are living near the poverty line,” says Elodie Mailliet storm, CatchLight’s CEO. “CatchLight looks to build sustainability and resiliency for the field by investing in key leaders committed to impact.”
This year, for the first time, the CatchLight Fellowship is supported in partnership with online photography gear provider, MPB.
“We are thrilled to sponsor CatchLight’s 2022 Global Fellowship this year,” said Sophie Collins, Chief Marketing Officer of MPB. “This outstanding program grants access and opportunity to visual storytellers in a completely unique way, and we’re proud to be a part of such a dynamic partnership that creates further access for all. Accessibility is the key to making sure all visual storytellers are heard.”
MPB is the world’s largest online platform for used photography and videography equipment, making cameras and photography gear more accessible and affordable. MPB shares CatchLight’s commitment to expanding access to the world of photography and to supporting photographers who aim to elevate their craft.
The current Fellow cohort is pushing forward representation and casting a new, more reflective, light on history. The 2021 Global Fellows are: Koral Carballo, who reveals a deeply textured reality of Afrodescendants in Mexico while teaching communities photo archiving methods to preserve that history; Roopa Gogineni, whose projects in India and the southern United States explore who and why we choose to commemorate and how that creates our collective memories; Bayeté Ross Smith, who explores the untold American history of racial domestic terrorism through his Red Summers project and delves into how appearance shapes our identity; and Daniella Zalcman, who expands her entrepreneurial work at Women Photograph to sustainably improve gender equity in visual journalism.
As part of CatchLight’s commitment to ensuring the long-term sustainability of the visual storytelling field, CatchLight is looking to support four innovative leaders who work to help grow and further the profession. CatchLight invests in impact — both on the visual storytelling field overall and the social issues our Fellows address. Nowhere was that commitment more evident than at the 2022 CatchLight Visual Storytelling Summit which featured Ross Smith, Zalcman and Gogineni as well as several other leaders in the field.
In 2019, CatchLight initiated the “CatchLight Impact Fund” as a process for current and past fellows to propose collaborations with CatchLight to produce impact-driven engagement activities such as workshops, exhibitions and community activations in connection to their work. Most recently, 2019 Global Fellow Sparsh Ahuja received a $10,000 award from our Impact Fund to provide headsets for Project Dastaan’s Child of Empire, an immersive virtual reality experience about the 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan.
THE JURY
The jury for the Global Fellowship includes a diverse global group of leaders in the world of visual storytelling and philanthropy. They are, from left to right: Gael Almeida regional director for Latin America for the National Geographic Society; photographer Tasneem Alsultan, a 2019 CatchLight Fellow; Lauren Kern, Apple News Editor in Chief; Amanda Minami, education philanthropist and Azu Nwagbogu, Founder and Director of African Artists’ Foundation. You can learn more about the 2022 jury here.
ELEMENTS OF THE PROGRAM
Financial Grant: a $30,000 award will be distributed throughout the fellowship year to support the Fellows and their projects.
Personal Development and Network Building: the Fellows will have personal and professional development opportunities, impact strategy, and networking support from CatchLight staff and the organization’s extended network of partners. They will join a community of like-minded Fellows and industry professionals and have exposure to opportunities within the CatchLight network such as mentorship roles, education activities, and speaking engagements.
Participation: Fellows will attend the annual CatchLight Visual Storytelling Summit in San Francisco in spring 2023. Other events that require participation include: an onboarding workshop, a celebration and speaking engagement designed to promote the Fellowship project, and a community engagement activity. Throughout the Fellowship year, Fellows attend regular virtual check-ins to stay in communication with CatchLight and the Fellows community. These check-ins will serve as an opportunity to share works in process and methodology and receive feedback from peers.
About CatchLight
CatchLight is a nonprofit media organization that believes in the power of visual storytelling to foster a more nuanced and empathetic understanding of the world. They bring resources and organizations together to discover, develop, and amplify visual storytellers at all levels. The organization invests in the future of visual storytelling through two fellowship programs. The CatchLight Global Fellowship annually provides four visionaries in the field grants to develop long-form storytelling projects, engage audiences, and continue their work as innovators and leaders defining the future of the field. The CatchLight Local Fellowship seeks to establish the long-term sustainability of visual journalism by pairing partner newsrooms—with little or no visual storytelling capacity—with community-based visual journalists, Local Fellows, to provide inclusive, in-depth, accurate, and locally contextualized information to the public. In 2021, CatchLight expanded its Local program and launched the CatchLight Local Visual Desk in California, a $2 million investment to address the decline of visual journalism in the Golden State. CatchLight is generously supported by individuals and organizations including the Emerson Collective and the Silicon Valley Foundation, Enlight Foundation, FujiFilm, Hearst Foundations, The John S and James L Knight Foundation, Kresge Foundation, and PhotoWings.
About MPB
MPB transforms the way that people buy, sell and trade in photo and video kits. The world’s largest online platform for used photography and videography equipment, MPB is a destination for everyone, whether you’ve just discovered your passion for visual storytelling or you’re already a pro. Founded by Matt Barker in 2011, MPB has always been committed to making kit more accessible and affordable, and helping to visualize a more sustainable future. They recirculate more than 300,000 items of used kit every year, extending the life and creative potential of photo and video equipment for creators around the world. Headquartered in the creative communities of Brighton, Brooklyn and Berlin, the MPB team includes trained camera experts and seasoned photographers and videographers who bring their passion to work every day to deliver outstanding service.