CatchLight is pleased to announce the jury for the 2024 CatchLight Global Fellowship. The Fellowship awards three visual storytellers $30,000 and access to development and networking opportunities. Now in its seventh year, CatchLight continues to search for innovative visual storytellers and leaders committed to advancing and growing the field of visual storytelling.
To support our search for fellows who are thinking about the long-term impacts of their work and embracing this opportunity to lead the field in creative and innovative ways, we enlisted the help of professionals across the photography landscape.
Brian L. Frank
Documentary Photographer
Follow: @brianlfrank
San Francisco native Brian L. Frank creates social documentary projects across the Americas that focus on cultural identity, social inequality, violence, workers’ rights and the environment. He is also a professor of journalism and a Catchlight Global Fellow. Frank’s collaboration with Catchlight, The Pulitzer Center and The Marshall Project documented the impacts of mass incarceration on minority communities. His project also involved creating a visuals-based curriculum and mentoring youth in juvenile detention facilities.
Brian has led multiple visual storytelling workshops for professionals as well as for youth in the United States and Mexico. His project, Downstream, Death of the Mighty Colorado [River], is held in the permanent collection at the United States Library of Congress and was recognized by POYi with the Global Vision Award.
Alessia Glaviano
Head of Global PhotoVogue
Follow: @alessiaglaviano
Alessia Glaviano is a leading figure in international photographic critique. In 2011, she launched PhotoVogue, a platform for users to share their photographs knowing they can rely on the curatorial supervision of professional photo editors.
Now in its 12th year, and having served over 300,000 photographers, PhotoVogue has plans to expand globally and to include media in all forms. In an expanded role, Alessia Glaviano is guiding PhotoVogue into this next phase and continues leading its creative direction.
In her 20-plus years with Condé Nast, Alessia led special events and curated exhibitions in prestigious museums and institutions with some of the most important artists of our times; she developed Vogue Italia’s Instagram strategy; she curated a series of Masters of Photography video interviews; and she led the art direction of numerous digital branded-content projects.
Jehan Jillani
Visuals Editor, The Atlantic
Follow: @jehanjillani
Jehan Jillani works on photography and art for The Atlantic’s digital features and special projects. She was previously the Picture and Visuals Editor at the Guardian US, where she oversaw commissioned photography that came out of the New York, DC and Oakland offices.
Jehan also worked as a photo editor at National Geographic and The New Yorker. Her work has been recognized by the Society of Publication Designers, American Photography, and American Society of Magazine Editors. Jehan is a graduate of Smith College and is based in Brooklyn, NY.
Vasant Nayak
Co-Founder, PhotoSouthAsia
Follow: @vasant.nayak.2020
With his Master of Visual Arts degree from Purdue University in Indiana, Vasant Nayak taught photography and directed a master’s program in digital arts at the Maryland Institute, College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland; one of the first of its kind in the U.S. He is the co-founder of PhotoSouthAsia, a platform that showcases photography from South Asia and a major funder of photography in the region.
On the Board of Trustees of the Aperture Foundation and the Exhibitions Committee of the International Center for Photography, Nayak is also a practicing photographer, whose inspiration comes from his native India.
Leandro Villaro
Director of Programs, Penumbra Foundation
Follow: @penumbrafoundation
Leandro Villaro is a photographer, editor and the Director of Programs at Penumbra Foundation. Based in New York City, Penumbra Foundation is a nonprofit arts organization committed to promoting a broad understanding of the contemporary photographic medium, including experimental, conceptual and handmade practices.
Villaro has collaborated with many institutions and artists in the United States and Latin America through publications, curatorial projects and other programming.
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