Announcing the Winners of Google’s 2022 Image Equity Fellowship

Today, in partnership with Google, For Freedoms, and FREE THE WORK, Aperture is pleased to announce the twenty recipients of the 2022 Image Equity Fellowship.

The winners of the 2022 Image Equity Fellowship are:

Jamil Baldwin, Miranda Barnes, McKayla Chandler, Maneesha Chaudhary, Nykelle DeVivo, Emanuel Hahn, Eric Hart Jr., Vikesh Kapoor, Adeline Lulo, Tiffany Luong, Maya June Mansour, Da’Shaunae Marisa, Xavier Scott Marshall, Ricardo Nagaoka, Nasrah Omar, David López Osuna, Walé Oyéjidé, Oluwatosin “Tosin” Popoola, C.T. Robert, Giancarlo Montes Santangelo

Google’s first-ever Image Equity Fellowship is a six-month, application-based Fellowship awarded to twenty early-career image-based creators of color in the US. This year’s selection involved the review of more than a thousand submissions by a jury comprised of Lebanese filmmaker and photographer Ahmed Klink; American artist and 2016 Guggenheim Fellow Lyle Ashton Harris; photographer and documentarian Bee Walker; multi-hyphenate creative Mahaneela; and Rujeko Hockley, Assistant Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

The Fellows will each receive $20,000 in unrestricted funds to create an image-based project that explores and uplifts communities of color. Throughout their six-month fellowships, they will be supported by Google and three industry-celebrated nonprofit partners—Aperture, For Freedoms, & FREE THE WORK—in the form of dedicated mentorship, workshops, funding, and publication of and press for their completed projects. 

Bee Walker, a mentor and reviewer, noted how much she is looking forward to working with the fellows, “Each of their portfolios personally moved, inspired, and challenged me, but more importantly, made me curious about what else they have to say visually… I’m certain that it will be a creatively enriching process for me as well.” Ahmed Klink also reflected on the review process, “I was thoroughly impressed by the quality and thoughtfulness of all the portfolios we got to look at. I cannot speak highly enough about the level of craft and the visual storytelling all the photographers brought to the table. It truly made an impact on me and it made the selection all the more difficult.”