Adriana Sanfeliu’s project, "Life on the Block," is the winner of the 2006 NPPA/Nikon Documentary Sabbatical Grant.
When I got the message that I won, I could not believe it. I feel very moved. It’s been a very lonely journey for me doing this work. I’ve had wonderful support from teachers along the way, but I feel that I really grew as a photographer with these photographs, and in understanding what documentary photography is to me and how I feel about it, and these people that I’ve been working with, these women in Harlem.
Brenda Ann Kenneally’s essay, "Legal Guardian: The Long Arm of the Law Reaches Inside America's Most Vulnerable Families," is the winner of the 2005 NPPA/Nikon Documentary Sabbatical Grant. Kennealy is the first-ever two-time winner of the NPPA/Nikon Documentary Sabbatical Grant (she previously won in 2000).
This grant means that I can continue to be a photographer for another year! It means I can keep working. I’ve been walking around saying that I would quit my job, if I only had one! No, really, it’s harder now than ever to do these kind of long-term projects, especially one based in America. It’s a time when we’re turning our interests to other countries, like Iraq and the war, and away from this kind of story that used to be a mainstream story here in the States. So now I can keep working on it for another year.
Felicia Webb won 2004's competition with "Fat Times in the USA." Webb has spent several years shooting essays on anorexia and bulimia.
Jon Lowenstein created "From Guerrero to Gringolandia and Back: Day Labor, Family, and the New Global Economy." He specializes in long-term, in-depth documentary photographic projects which strive to challenge the status quo. Lowenstein lives in Chicago.
Eugene Richards, a freelance photographer, filmmaker, and writer from New York, created "Stepping Through the Ashes" as a tribute to the people lost in the World Trade Center attacks. More »
John Ficara, of Arlington, VA, is a freelance photojournalist who documented the disappearance of the black farmer in America, a study that began as a Newsweek assignment while he was on staff for the magazine.
Brenda Ann Kenneally is a freelance photographer based in New York City and the winner of the 2000 NPPA/Missouri Pictures of the Year Community Awareness Award for her work documenting her Brooklyn, NY, neighborhood. She will explore family patterns of addition and economic dependency on illegal drugs, examining how the face of the urban landscape has changed.
Joanna B. Pinneo, Boulder, Colorado, documented "Rites of Passage: American Girls Entering Adolescence Today" as her sabbatical project. "Girls on the brink of adolescence," wrote Pinneo, "face an array of threats to their physical and emotional well being that they have seldom faced before." She focused on seven new and traditional rites.
Steven K. Hart's project documents the life of a family grappling with the devastating effects of AIDS. The project tracks a family's disintegration — drug abuse, prostitution, domestic violence — and their love, which has kept everyone afloat. Hart started the project in 1990 when a psychiatrist friend asked him to document an HIV/AIDS support group.
Lauren Greenfield is a freelance photographer based in Venice, Calif. In her application, she proposed to explore "the aging process in America and how it is changing through dramatic breakthroughs in the science, psychology, culture, industry and demography of aging." Her long-term project on growing up in Los Angeles received the 1997 Community Awareness Award in the NPPA/Missouri Pictures of the Year contest.
Randy Olson is a contract photographer for National Geographic and former Pittsburgh Press staffer. His proposal was to continue a project begun in 1991, covering the effects of AIDS on surviving family members. He received the 1991 Robert F. Kennedy Award for social documentary of the disadvantaged.
Alan Berner, a photographer for The Seattle Times, produced "The American West in the 90s." A four-time NPPA Region 11 Newspaper Photographer of the Year, Berner holds degrees in photojournalism and philosophy from the University of Missouri.
Fred Larson, a veteran staffer at the San Francisco Chronicle, photographed "Heroes: The Changing Faces of American Manhood." He was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1989. He holds two California Press Photographer of the Year titles.
Rita Reed, a staff photographer at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis, MN, used her grant to document the lives of gay and lesbian adolescents in the Twin Cities area. She is a former Iowa Photographer of the Year.
Stephen Shames, a Philadelphia-based contract photographer, chose as his topic, "Homicide in America: The Unseen Civil War." The idea for the project came from spending 20 days with homicide detectives in Houston.
Joe Cavaretta, now with the Associated Press and previously at the San Jose Mercury News and Albuquerque Tribune, chose "Urban Indians: The Invisible Americans" to show how American Indians in the city cling to their culture.
John Kaplan's project, the 1992 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for feature photography, showed the diversity of lifestyles among 21-year-olds in transition to the adult world.
Formerly a staff photographer at the Kansas City Star and now with the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Jean Shifrin photographed elderly grandparents raising their infant granddaughter and teenage grandson.
David Wells, newspaper and magazine freelancer, documented "The Pesticide Poisoning of America" in California's Central Valley and illustrated the effects of dangerous pesticides on farm workers.
David Peterson, a staff photographer at the Des Moines Register, produced "Shattered Dreams: The Iowa Farm Crisis" which won a feature Pulitzer Prize in 1987.
April Saul, of the Philadelphia Inquirer, documented the lives of the Hmong, a tribal people from Laos who came to the U.S. after the Vietnam War. Her documentary work about a Cambodian refugee child was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in feature photography in 1987.