The Manuel Rivera-Ortiz Foundation For Documentary Photography & Film
2016 Photography Grant Finalists
Click photographer name to view portfolio submission
Canada
Where the Rivers Flow Through – Documenting the impact of a hydroelectric dam complex and collateral exploitive industries on indigenous communities and their ancestral homelands in the Amazon rainforest.
Italy
Environmental Migrants: The Last Illusion – Depicting the primary yet under-reported socio-economic consequence of climate change on human populations in the form of rural-urban environmental migration.
Italy
Prisoners – Covering decrepit conditions and the reconstruction of a daily life for inmates in the largest prisons across Italy as a reflection on Italian society from small drama to great social and economic crises.
Greece
The Wind Cries War – Having reached Germany, the personal and cultural struggles of now settled Syrian refugees are covered and juxtaposed with newly arrived refugees in Greece preparing for their second odyssey integrating into conservative EU societies.
Bangladesh
After Rana Plaza – Search and rescue efforts have ended and the media coverage is gone. The struggles of victims from the world’s largest industrial disaster are documented and the garment industry is called to account for unsafe factory conditions.
France
Euthanasia Tourism – Through the journey of one patient, his family and doctors, both sides of the under-discussed and under-reported story of legalized assisted suicide for the terminally ill and chronically in pain are covered.
Slovenia
Damascus Life Needs Life – Behind the civil war front lines in the relative safety of the city, untold personal stories of everyday life under the Assad regime are captured in the harsh living conditions and environment of fear.
Spain
Targeting the Education – Documenting the destruction of schools and murdering of teachers by the militant group Boko Haram and their continued attacks on all aspects of education and those who see it as a plot against Islam.
Russia
Warm Waters – Investigating the impact of climate change on indigenous communities of Alaska where the local Inuit populations are losing ancestral homes and their connection to their native land, culture and history.
Germany
Mama Lisa – Following a Jewish woman, the daughter of a holocaust survivor, who has dedicated her life to freeing minority Yazidi women and children from ISIS captivity in the Kurdish Northern Iraq and saving them from genocide.
Indonesia
The Great Greed Impact on the Simple Life of Suku Anak Dalam – Documenting the ecological disaster caused by the palm oil, rubber and wood industries and the impact on a semi-nomadic tribe.
Germany
Mongolia’s Growing Social Inequalities – Following formerly nomadic migrants living in a massive yurt district on the outskirts of Mongolia’s capitol depending on mostly unlicensed, unsafe coal mines for work and life.