Eugene Smith Fund announces 2021 grant call for entries

GaryPageau
Sabiha Cimen – From her project, Hafız: The Guardians of Quran (Cimen was one of five photographers who received a $10,000 Smith Grant in 2020) About the photo: Elif, 9, is a new student in the Qur’an school. It is her first day covering her head. Her aim is to memorize the whole Qur’an and to be a Hafız in the next two years.

Due to the pandemic, the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund will again break from its 40-year tradition of honoring a single photographer with its grant ($40,000) and instead present five photographers each with $10,000. The decision to present five grants was first approved by the fund’s board of trustees in early 2020 to support an extended number of deserving grant candidates. Now in its 42nd year, and after a successful holiday print sale consisting of works from previous grant recipients and finalists, the Eugene Smith Fund is announcing a call for entries to its 2021 grant. Since the Fund’s inception in 1979, it has awarded more than $1 million to photographers whose past work and proposed projects follow the tradition of W. Eugene Smith’s career as a photographic essayist.

In addition, The Smith Fund is accepting applications for the Fourth Annual Eugene Smith Student Grant open to all collegiate-level students, and the 25th annual Howard Chapnick Grant, which honors an individual or organization whose services support photographers in the field.

The Smith Fund also announced it will maintain partnerships with several international photo organizations to encourage documentary photographers from a variety of demographic and socio-economic backgrounds to submit their work to the annual Smith Fund Grant.

Despite the pandemic, last year’s Smith Fund received the highest number of entries in the grant’s 41-year history with recipients being selected from entries representing 66 countries.

Photographers and other industry professionals interested in submitting applications for these grants (or interested in learning more about the grants and fellowship), should visit SmithFund.org. The deadline for submitting applications is May 30, 2021.