By Holly Stuart Hughes

South African photographer Mikhail Subotsky is the winner of the 2008 W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography." The $30,000 grant will support his project, "Crime, Punishment and Security in Post-Apartheid South Africa." The grant was announced at a ceremony October 22 in New York.

Subotsky has previously explored the South African penal system in his book, Beaufort West, which was published by Chris Boot this fall. Beaufort West is a small and blighted town in South Africa dominated by its prison.

The grant caps a year of successes for Subotzky, who was made a nominee of Magnum in 2007. He was awarded the Infinity Award for Young Photography by the International Center of Photography in May. He is also one of two photographers featured in the exhibition "New Photography 2008," now on view at New York's Museum of Modern Art. He was also selected for PDN's 30 this year.   

Two other fellowships, with prizes of $2,500 each, were also awarded to Stephanie Sinclair of the United States for her project on child marriage around the world, and to Lu Guang of China, for his project on that country's pollution.

Other finalists for the grant were Alixandra Fazzina for her project "A Million Shillings"; Danny Wilcox Frazier for "Americans Forgotten"; Alberto Giuliani for "Married to the Mob"; Lori Grinker for "Iraq: Scars and Exile"; Jon Lowenstein for "Shadow Lives USA"; Carlos Javier Ortiz for "The Side of Hope: Beauty Within Tragedy of Urban Life"; Lizzie Sadin for "Women and Children for Sale" and Anderson Schneider, "The Loudest Whisper: Scars of Leprosy in Brazil."

The W. Eugene Smith Fund reports that a record 193 proposals were submitted for this year's grant.

The jury for this year's Smith grants was Marcel Saba, the president of Redux Pictures and a trustee of the W. Eugene Smith Fund; Nailya Alexander, director of the Nailya Alexander gallery in New York; and Charles Traub, chairperson of the Masters program in photography at New York's School of Visual Arts.

Also awarded on Thursday was the Howard Chapnick Grant for the Advancement of Photojournalism. The $5,000 grant was awarded to Ren Yue, a photographer and professor of photojournalism at Renmin University in Beijing to support a project titled “New Topographics: Beijing’s Contemporary Urban Landscapes.” The project began last year when Yue chose seven photographers to document changes wrought by the 2008 summer Olympic Games in Beijing. The work is scheduled to be completed at the end of this year, when it will be turned into an exhibition and a multimedia presentation.

The judges for the Chapnick Grant were Marcel Saba; photojournalist Donna Ferrato; Robert Pledge, president of the W. Eugene Smith Fund, and also of Contact Press Images; Aaron Schindler, managing director of Wealth Advisory Group LLC; and Yukiko Launois, photo editor and coordinator of the Howard Chapnick Grant.

Since 1980, the W. Eugene Smith Fund has awarded a grant to support photojournalists who demonstrate a deep commitment to humanistic documentary photography. This year's grants were supported in part by contributions from Open Society Institute, The Mona Fund, Getty Images and Digital Railroad. 

Information on how to apply for the W. Eugene Smith grant or the Howard Chapnick Grant can be found at the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund web site.


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