In 1988, a generous gift from Janis Meyer, an alumna of MICA who received an MFA in photography, made it possible to endow a travel fellowship for senior photography students. A $5,000 cash prize is awarded annually to a senior photography student to travel in the U.S. or abroad for a photographic project. The travel stipulation is open to interpretation, and might include a road trip or a project residency away from home.
All BFA Photography Majors are eligible to apply in their senior year.
“Treasure It” is a project that spans 800 miles and three centuries of women communities across the American South. Documenting the traces of the Sanctificationists of Belton Texas, Camp Sister Spirit in Jones County Mississippi, and the community which surrounds my Aunt Sara Joe in Birmingham Alabama.
My goal is to travel to Nicaragua and photograph late stage American Imperialism. I want to see the visual effects of American intervention and how that has altered the trajectory for many South American countries, specifically Nicaragua. It is a comparison of what is and what could have been.
In an attempt to reconnect with my Guatemalan heritage, I will go back to where it all started in order to get a better understanding of my history and how it has influenced not only my entire identity but also to find what sparks my curiosity within my practice.
This project explores my ancestral homeland; retracing the migration route my grandparents and their families took fleeing from villages in South China to Hong Kong due to the Communist Revolution. Forced migration and the ultimate decision to take this uncertain and laborious journey is an all too common experience. We do it for our family, our livelihood; escaping suffering for a better future. Now 60 years later, I have grown up in a space “between many cultures” with no tie to a “homeland”, but with the hope to never forget their hardships that led me to this point of my life. “To Excavate, to Honor, to Remember” is a homage to not only my family who made this tumultuous journey, but to honor the millions of families seeking a better future for a cause far beyond them, for generations to come.
This project will use photographic documentation and research to explore the production and potential of geothermal energy in Iceland. The imagery will highlight the capabilities of new, renewable technology and its consequences within a changing climate.
“Second Chance at Life” focuses on the challenges faced by addicts attempting recovery in Delray Beach, Florida. Through a series of photographs of: recovering addicts, twelve step meeting spaces, and sober homes, I will examine the tension between the promise of a “recovery paradise” and the reality of seeking sobriety.
The project aims to capture the correlation between the advancement of technology and the decline of romantic relationships in Tokyo, Japan. By utilizing Love Hotels, a type of hotel in Japan in which Japanese men and women pay to use the hotel’s resources for sexual encounters. I will stage scenarios of local people in the area with their preferred item of modern technology. I will also focus on the technology unique to this area and take individual romanticized portraits of various technologic objects.
This collaborative project, supported by the Jan Meyer Traveling Fellowship, was made during a two month road trip from Pennsylvania to Texas during the Summer of 2017. We went into this trip with our main interest being Texas and its representation to the two of us. We set out, interested in a larger understanding of masculinity, specifically in relationship to a current political climate where the shoot first, ask questions later, mentality has been resurrected. The two of us had never been to Texas prior to this trip. We had only heard the stories of this place and the men who have wandered this western landscape from our older relatives, western films, and literature. We wanted to look for ourselves to see what it meant to us to be a man in America today. The two of us wanted to see, as singular people and as partners, where we fit into this landscape that held so much influence to our understanding and our elders understanding of masculinity, America, and life.
On December 31st 1991 at 4:15 A.M. I was born to parents enlisted in the Army as linguists studying Russian and Serbo-Croatian at the Defense Language Institute. After two years of life, we were relocated to Hanover Maryland where we have remained. The founding resolution of this proposal is to investigate how I am connected to the landscape of my birthplace of Monterey, California with the intent of establishing a personal relationship. This investigation will take the form of a spiritual journey to seek self-awareness and wisdom from others while reflecting upon my identity, existence, and purpose as an artist.
Raising Daughters will be a photographic series about childrearing in Kathmandu with a specific focus on women’s rights. The nation of Nepal, nestled between the two super entities of land and political power that are China and India, is a country often overlooked. This project will center itself upon women living in the Kathmandu valley of Nepal. Specifically, I wish to explore the art of raising daughters.
It is my intent to embark upon a series of trips in which I investigate K-12 school communities of the American South’s past by bringing their former inhabitants back into their classrooms to engage in a visual conversation about educational priorities and the ways in which their classroom experiences have shaped their lives.
I will be photographing my exploration of the pilgrims of Camino de Santiago, the towns who support them through their journey, the relevance of history found within the roads, and the human bonds I hope to create. I desperately want to find a faith in something I cannot see or hold or hear, even if it is just a belief that everyone is somehow connected by their search for something greater, for something that cannot be found alone. These photographs will pose questions of belief and a desire to find meaning beyond daily life struggles, and in looking at this series, others will be able to relate this physical journey to their own life quests.
I flew into Whitehorse, the capital of the Yukon, which is eight hours south of Dawson City. I spent the majority of that summer on the farm—weeding, pruning, pollenating, and taking photographs. Every few days, I'd hitch a ride into town. There's no cell phone service, so to find your friends, you just walk into their house or, if they weren't there, you check the riverside or the bar. Some nights would be spent drinking moonshine or listening to a friend play the banjo while sitting on a shipwreck, or swimming in freezing rivers and lakes, or a combination of all of those things. You don't need electricity when the sun doesn't set, which during this time of the year, it never does. Running water isn't that much of a necessity when you're surrounded by rivers.
“The Outliers” series began when photographer Elle Pérez, “in the midst of an intense gender identity crisis,” arrived in rural Tennessee at a “Faerie” sanctuary for seekers of radical queer community. Pérez was inspired there by people freely embracing identities between and beyond the male/female gender binary. “I found reading the stories and seeing the faces of others who were like me,” the artist said, “to be extremely important in my own self-identification and maturing process."
In 2010, I traveled to the grasslands of the Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan, China. I wanted to hear the folk songs of Gesar, an 11th century enlightened warrior king, and to photograph the extended families of the Genong Village. The families that form Genong are Khampa Tibetan nomads and proud descendants of Gesar. For the next three years I spent the summer months photographing, living and working with this clan.
The project will explore mass tourism and the damage that it does to environment and local communities. Usually, people don't related trouism with environmental and social problems like strip mining, coal burning, storage of nuclear waste, or manufacutring products using heavy metals. The purpose of tourism is recreation, which does not sound dangerous. Everybody needs time off work and time for travelling. In reality, however, tourism may become a threat if it is executed in an industrial manner and is not planned in accordance with the local environment.
Regain/Regrowth: Photographs from Latvia and the Baltic Region. My curiosity with Latvia and the Baltic region grew out of my relationship with my grandmother Lilija Fisher. In her later years. Lilija exhibited a swift progression of Alzheimer's that left her with little recollection of her past and her homeland in Eastern Europe, Latvia. I wrote a proposal outlining ins desire to travel to her birthplace and conduct a photography project. Lilija passed away days after I submitted my proposal. When I left for Latvia I believed I would be tracing ideas of memory and their direct application to my family. I thought I would be asking questions about the role of Latvia's political history in my family and its effects. Little did I know that the history of the country itself was so rich in content, and still so vivid in its people that I didn't need to rely on my own family to understand its significance.
Daniel Shea‘s “Coal Work,” a long-term investigation of the coal industry in the Appalachian region, grew out of a simple curiosity about where electricity came from. He first photographed mountaintop removal and modern coal mining in West Virginia as an undergraduate student in 2007, and later photographed in Southeast Ohio, an area dense with coal-fired power plants. In addition to receiving recognition for the work in the form of exhibitions and press, Shea developed an interest in “exploring post-industrial ruin and entropic states,” which he says “will drive my practice for many years to come.”
