ANNOUNCEMENT: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE [14 October 2009] THE 2009 GRANT IN HUMANISTIC PHOTOGRAPHY GOES TO LU GUANG FOR POLLUTION IN CHINA AS THE W,EUGENE SMITH MEMORIAL FUND CELEBRATES ITS 30th ANNIVERSARY Lu Guang, 48, from the People’s Republic of China, is the recipient of the 2009 W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography for his ongoing project Pollution in China in the amount of thirty thousand dollars The W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund announcement was made at the 30th annual awards ceremony that took place on October 14, 2009 at the Asia Society in New York City. Mr. Lu has been documenting the ecological disasters in China resulting from the rapid growth of the economy since 2005. Over the last three decades, as peoples’ living standards have constantly been on the rise in the country,industrial pollution has brought serious consequences for public health and for the environment at large. Born in 1961 in Zhejiang Province, China, Lu Guang has been fascinated with photography since he held the camera for the first time in 1980 when he was a factory worker in his hometown of Yongkang County. From 1993 to 1995, he studied at the Fine Arts Academy of Tsinghua University in Beijing. A freelancer since 1993, his focus has been stories on major social and environmental issues in his own country. His photographic projects include essays on gold diggers, small coal mines, the SARS epidemic, drug addiction, AIDS villages in Henan Province, the Qinghai-Tibet railway, environmental pollution and the problem of schistosomiasis (bilharzia). Lu’s work is now widely published in China. Mr. Lu won the First Prize in the category of Contemporary Issues Stories at the 2004 World Press Photo Competition in The Netherlands for AIDS village. His picture story on drug addicts in Yunnan province at the Sino-Burmese border was exhibited at the Visa pour l'Image Festival, in France, that same year. In 2005, he was the first photographer from China to be invited by the US State Department as a visiting scholar. He won the Henri Nannan Prize for Photography in Germany in 2008, and the following year received a fellowship from the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund in the USA. The Smith Fund’s jury panel of three experts — Helen Marcus, Chair of the Jury, President Emerita of the Fund; Devika Daulet-Singh, founder and director of the Photo-Ink photography gallery in New Delhi, India; Jeff L. Rosenheim, curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s department of photography in New York City — also granted a five thousand dollar fellowship to Krisanne Johnson, native of Ohio, living in Brooklyn, NY, USA, for her ongoing project “I Love You Real Fast” about young woman coming of age in Swaziland at the time of the AIDS pandemic in Africa. Three other finalists were selected by the jury among the 216 proposals submitted this year by applicants from thirty-two countries: Matt Eich Norfolk, from Virginia, USA, for "Carry Me Ohio"; Johan Spanner from Copenhagen, Denmark, for "The Sworn Virgins of Albania”; and Joseph Sywenkyj from Campton, New Hampshire, USA, for "Verses." For the last thirty years the Grant in Humanistic Photography has been presented annually by the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund to recognize photographers who have demonstrated a deep commitment to documenting the human condition in the formidable tradition of compassionate dedication that W. Eugene Smith exhibited during his forty-five year career as a photographic essayist. These concerned photographers make a tremendous contribution to our understanding of complex issues that affect mankind across the planet. One of the most prestigious honors in photojournalism, The W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography was established a year after the death of the legendary American photo-essayist W. Eugene Smith on October 15, 1978, by his friends Jim Hughes, John Morris and the late Howard Chapnick to perpetuate his work ethic and indomitable spirit. The grant program provides photojournalists with the financial freedom to envision and carry out major photographic studies, and is funded this year by generous contributions from: Open Society Institute (OSI), The Estate of Nell J. Stone, Blurb, Inc., Canon USA, and individual donations. From fourteen different nationalities, past grant recipients are: Marc Asnin, Jane Evelyn Atwood, Laetizia Battaglia, Ernesto Bazan, Ellen Binder, Pep Bonet, Chien-Chi Chang, Carl DeKeyzer, Stephen Dupont, Donna Ferrato, Maya Goded, Paul Graham, Stanley Greene, Graciela Iturbide, Alain Keler, Brenda Ann Kenneally, Gideon Mendel, Dario Mitidieri, James Nachtwey, Trent Parke, Paolo Pellegrin, Gilles Peress, Eli Reed, Eugene Richards, Cristina Garcia Rodero, Milton Rogovin, Sebastião Salgado, Mikael Subotzky, Vladimir Syomin, John Vink and Kai Wiedenhöfer. For more information on the W. Eugene Smith Fund and grant visit our website at: www.smithfund.org W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund c/o International Center of Photography 1133 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10036, USA 6 2009-10-15T16:27:59Z 0 2009-10-15T16:53:37Z true 30282 false 483 2009-10-16T13:56:55Z true 2010-04-15T00:00:00Z false 2009-grant-recipient-from-w-eugene-smith-fund 1 2009-10-16T13:56:55Z 5185