2024 Grant Judging Weekend
Now in its 33rd year, The Alexia grant competition received hundreds of submissions from around the world. Submissions will be judged based on the overall quality, feasibility and outcomes of the project proposal as well as the imagery provided during live judging March 29–30 at the Newhouse School.
The Alexia student category will be judged March 29 by Sangsuk Sylvia Kang of TIME Magazine, Salwan Georges of the Washington Post and Whitney Latorre of the Catalina Island Conservancy. They will judge the professional category March 30. Both days will be moderated by Adriana Letorney, this year’s Alexia fellow and Visura.co co-founder.
Sangsuk Sylvia Kang is a photographer, journalist and photo editor at TIME Magazine. From Seoul and based in New York City, she is a graduate of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. She has served as a juror for World Press Photo, NPPA’s Best of Photojournalism competition, and TIME’s collaborative photo contest with ASMP, ‘The Human Element,’ among others.
Salwan Georges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist for The Washington Post. In 2020, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize with his team for covering climate change around the world. In 2023, he was named Photographer of the Year by the National Press Photographers Association for his work covering the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the race to save Black Rhinos in Africa, and the fentanyl crisis in the U.S. and Mexico. And he was awarded with Photo of the Year by Siena Awards for his work in Ukraine. In 2021, Georges was named Photographer of the Year by Pictures of the Year International for covering a racial reckoning in Minneapolis, an unforgettable U.S. national election, and a deadly pandemic. His ongoing work on Middle Eastern communities in the United States has been added to a collection at the Library of Congress in D.C.
Whitney (Johnson) Latorre is the new president and CEO of the Catalina Island Conservancy, a nonprofit dedicated to the responsible stewardship of Santa Catalina Island through conservation, education and recreation. Formerly, Latorre was National Geographic’s vice president for visuals and immersive experiences. She also was on staff at The New Yorker, first as a picture editor and later as the director of photography. Before joining the magazine, Latorre worked at the Open Society Foundations, where she managed an international grant competition and curated an exhibition of documentary photography.
Feel free to join us for The Alexia 2024 professional and student grant judging weekend (sponsored by Sony) MARCH 29–30 at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University in Newhouse I Room 102. Student submissions will be judged on Friday, beginning at 9 a.m. and will be followed by a Q&A session with the judges in the early afternoon, then the keynote presentation by Washington Post photographer Salwan Georges. The professional grant submissions will be judged on Saturday, beginning at 9 a.m. If you plan to attend and require assistive services, please contact Sarah Romano at sroman06@syr.edu by March 20. (The event will not be live-streamed.)
Professional and student grant winners will be announced in mid-April, along with runners-up and award of excellence recognitions. The Alexia would like to thank Sony for sponsoring the grant judging weekend and Visura.co for its support as well as our grant and award partners for expanding this year’s offerings: the Albany Foundation, Brother’s Keeper International the Eddie Adams Workshop, the fStop Foundation, James Balog / the Earth Vision Institute, and the VII Foundation.