Emerging Photographer Grant 2010

We are now receiving submissions for a grant of $15,000.

Funding is  designed to support continuation of  a photographer’s personal project. This body of work may be of either journalistic mission  or purely personal artistic imperatives…

The Emerging Photographer Fund grant  was initiated by David Alan Harvey in 2008, and is awarded by the Magnum Foundation, a non-profit created by the member photographers from Magnum Photos, Inc…Funding for the EPF has come from several  private donors who have chosen to remain anonymous.

The EPF  Jury for 2009 was: Martin Parr, Gilles Peress, Eugene Richards, Carol Nagar, Fred Ritchin, Maggie Steber, David Griffin, John Gossage and James Nachtwey…

The 2008 Emerging Photographer Fund grant was awarded to Sean Gallagher for his essay  on the environmental “desertification” of China.

The 2009 Emerging Photographer Fund grant was awarded to Alejandro Chaskielburg for his essay on the Parana River delta (see below)

Emerging Photographer Grant 2009 Recipient

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Alejandro Chaskielberg – The High Tide

With my photographs I create fictional scenarios with real people and situations.

I try to explore the limits of documentary photography, using technical processes to transform the natural perception of light, colors and spaces.

I am working on a project about the Paraná River Delta photographed in full moon.
The Paraná River supplies water for more than one hundred million people, including the cities of San Pablo, Buenos Aires and Asunción, Argentina. The whole Paraná basin is one of the principal reserves of sweet water in the world.

My photographs set out to document the life and work of the islanders of the Delta.
Using long-time exposures with full moon, they have allowed me to light part of the landscape artificially and also give the islanders a strange timelessness: an unknown source of light floods the scene with unreality and mysterious.

I think my pictures as slides of unfinished stories, having a script on my head. The images are carefully planned after days of observation, and they only have a body when the large-format camera initiates the slow subordination of the capture. It will take from five to ten minutes until this thick darkness sprouts what was secret.

I am interested in the poetical and visual power of the water, and the relationship of the people and the environment. I think that the health of this resource is a worldwide problematic issue today.

My intention is to work with photography in the border between reality and fiction.
Photography can transform reality and produce a magical view of people and life, and this is a part of its particular language.

Photographs: Alejandro Chaskielberg
Website: www.chaskielberg.com