Furthering the legacy of the Leica Women Foto Project, Leica is pleased to announce the recipients of the second annual Leica Women Foto Project Award.
This prestigious award is a part of the Leica Women Foto Project, an ongoing commitment to diversity in visual storytelling to help empower the female point of view through photography.
The mission of the Leica Women Foto Project is to encourage and empower photographers to demonstrate the importance and impact of a female’s point of view. The award serves as a catalyst to re-frame how we see, how we think, and how we express our visual narrative.

The three award winners this year are Matika Wilbur, Karen Zusman, and Anna Boyiazis and were selected by a diverse panel of judges ranging from award-winning photojournalists to renowned contributors to the world of photography.
Each recipient is awarded $10,000, a Leica Q2 camera, and a mentorship to support the continuation of their photo projects.

Finding Freedom in the Water – Anna Boyiazis

“In 2016, I began photographing my ongoing project, Finding Freedom in the Water, which bears witness to women and girls in Zanzibar learning to swim, an act of emancipation. This proposal focuses on an in-depth, visual narrative of these women and girls, revealing the broader and the more intimate context of their daily lives.” – Anna Boyiazis

Project 562: Pandemic Portraits and Stories from Native Youth – Matika Wilbur

Over 10 years ago Matika Wilbur began to develop a monumental aspiration that has led to Project 562. To help develop a body of imagery and cultural representations of Native Peoples to counteract the relentlessly insipid, one-dimensional stereotypes circulating in mainstream media, historical textbooks, and the culture industry. To create positive indigenous role models to do justice to the richness and diversity and lived experiences of Indian Country.

The Super Power of Me: Celebrating Young Black, Brown & Immigrant Lives – Karen Zusman

“The Super Power of Me project celebrates young lives of color and immigrants with a portrait series that shows who they are before the world tells them otherwise. It consists of an outdoor exhibit and creativity workshops that help express, protect and share with the world their vision of who they are.” -Karen Zusman

More info on: https://us.leica-camera.com/
Cover picture by Matika Wilbur