Eugene Smith Memorial Fund announces Judges for 2021 Grants in Humanistic Photography

The W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund announced the judges for its 2021 annual grants including the Eugene Smith Grant, Howard Chapnick Grant, and Eugene Smith Student Grant. Nicole Frugé, Director of Visuals for the San Francisco Chronicle, Lisa Volpe, Associate Curator at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Michael Hamtil, Assistant Director of Multimedia at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Darcy Eveleigh, photo editor and former Pulitzer Prize Chairperson and juror, and Elizabeth Dalziel, a multi-award-winning photographer and Fellowship recipient based in London, are among this year’s esteemed jurors. They will be joined by members of the Smith Fund board of trustees who will serve as jury Chairs in each grant category.

The W. Eugene Smith Fund will continue accepting applications for all grants through May 30, 2021. Submission extensions will not be granted. The Smith Memorial Fund currently presents more than $65,000 annually to documentary photographers around the world and has presented more than $1 million in grants and fellowships since it was founded in 1979.

Despite the pandemic and its stranglehold on world economies and social gatherings, last year’s Smith Fund received the highest number of entries in the grant’s 42-year history with entries submitted from 66 countries. Recognizing the widespread financial need caused by the pandemic last year, especially for the arts, including documentary photography, the Smith Fund’s Board of Trustees determined the grant would have greater significance if shared among several photographers and presented five recipients each with $10,000 grants. The Board of Trustees confirmed it would again present five grant recipients each with $10,000 in 2021. The Fund’s long tradition has been to present a large grant to a single photographer.

Finalists in all categories will be announced in August and grant recipients will be announced in early Fall, 2021.