Magnum Foundation, Magnum Photos, and the Inge Morath Estate are pleased to announce Fabiola Ferrero as the recipient of this year’s Inge Morath Award. Ferrero will receive a $5,000 production grant to support the completion of her long-term documentary project, I Can't Hear the Birds. This year’s finalist, Taniya Sarkar, will receive a $1,000 grant in support of her project.
Ferrero is a journalist and photographer born in Caracas. Her personal work is the result of how her childhood memories contrast with contemporary Venezuela. She wants to complement the question "What is happening?" with "How is this affecting our souls"?
Previously a Photography and Social Justice Fellow in 2018, she continues to pursue this expanding body of work. She says: Venezuela is not a country anymore, but a state of mind. I Can’t Hear the Birds is an emotional visual journey of the grief caused by migration, but from the point of view of those who stay. The desolation of natural landscapes, the spaces that migrants leave behind and the memories in the dusty family albums have traces of a once-prosperous land, but also signs of the collective pain of losing our home.
Ferrero’s project was selected from a pool of 83 applications by the membership of Magnum Photos. Given each year to a woman or nonbinary photographer under the age of 30, the award honors the legacy of their colleague, Inge Morath.
On receiving the award, Ferrero said, "I'm still in awe to look at the past recipients and see my name next to them. It is because of women like them that we now have a less painful path to walk. I'm grateful, I'm happy and I'm also feeling great responsibility to keep working and opening spaces for others.”
Photo by Fabiola Ferrero
This year’s finalist, Taniya Sarkar, is being recognized for her project Nothing Left to Call Home, which investigates how religious violence in her home state of West Bengal, India, is also patriarchal violence targeting women.
Sarkar is an independent Indian-Bengali photographer based in Kolkata, India. She showcases the country’s socio-political reality through the suppressed stories of women.
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Inge Morath Award. On Instagram, we’ve spent the week looking back on the work of past recipients. In the British Journal of Photography, writer Sumeja Tulic reflects on Morath’s perseverance in a male-dominated industry, and her influence on the women and nonbinary photographers who followed in her footsteps.
Photo by Taniya Sarkar:
Hena Parvin, 24, was molested by men in a crowd. As a result, her fiancé refused to marry her.
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