The Foto Awards
Meet our 2023 awardees!
2023 Self-Expression Award
Alé Rivas, Youth Awardee
Alé Rivas is a 16-year-old artist based in Ontario from the Inland Empire. They have always been in touch with their creative side; exploring crafting, painting, and photography. Their use of photography allows them to showcase their view of the world around them. Alé is able to capture their experiences and emotions that are caused by their own community. Having experienced a strong sense of alienation throughout their life, Alé Rivas is a firm believer of advocating for those who feel as if they do not belong.
Nilupa Yasmin
Nilupa Yasmin is an award-winning artist and educator with a primarily lens-based practice. She explores the principles of art and craft and the expanded materiality within photography.
The artist is interested in the notion of culture, self-identity, and anthropology. Whilst investigating ideals and traditions that are close to home, she repeatedly draws upon her own identity through gender, religion, and her British Bangladeshi culture and heritage.
2023 Advocacy Award
Michelle Montenegro
Michelle Montenegro (she/her/Ella) is a 19-year-old Los Angeles-based mixed media artist. Her work is inspired by the social and historical contexts that influence the various layers of her identity and experiences. In this approach, Michelle’s work focuses on the issues of capitalism, migration, family ties, and intergenerational trauma within communities of color. She aims to redistribute power to her subjects and the different communities she belongs to through honest storytelling and photographic perspective. Michelle combines family photo archives, portrait photography, and collages to achieve her conceptual goals.
Alexis Hunley
Based in Los Angeles, California, Alexis Hunley is a photographer whose art centers on the intersectional experiences of underrepresented communities. She views each opportunity to create as a collaboration that can only truly prosper with trust, care, compassion, and integrity. With a focus on deep exploration of vulnerability and emotional connection, Hunley encourages audiences to embrace their authentic selves and delve into the depths of their own experiences. Her life long goal is to create work that celebrates the beauty and complexity of the human experience.
2023 Catalyst Award
Ketzally Alcala
Ketzally Alcala, a 17 year old photographer based in East Los Angeles. Throughout her photography journey she has been able to experiment with different niches but specializes in portrait, editorial and lifestyle. As seen in her work, Ketzally incorporates her indigenous roots and beliefs into each image curated. She feels as if it is her mission to shed light into her community and people.
Growing up in a predominantly brown community, she observed her surroundings and found that there was a lack of brown voices being uplifted. Through her work she hopes to elicit a sense of belonging and comfort. For a big period in her life she questioned where she belonged and where her place in the world was. She felt a sense of misplacement. Through images, she is able to create memories that allow her to retrace her identity when in moments of self-reflection.
Djeneba Aduayom
Djeneba Aduayom is a self-taught artist whose work is marked by a sense of movement, performance, and personal interrogation. Her aesthetic is as much influenced by her multidisciplinary training and extensive travels, as it is by her multicultural heritage.
Aduayom always seeks to capture layers of emotions contained within people, often with hints of abstraction and surrealism. The ability to speak multiple visual languages, both literally and metaphorically, fuels her inspiration and creative output. The imaginative worlds she builds invite her viewers inwards and beckons them to travel to a universe of their very own making.
Aduayom believes we are complex beings that are united by underlying commonalities. The human experience is more universal and uniting than individual and derisive. Dualities exist, juxtaposing against one another in striking and complementary ways. These observations are at the core of her creative expression.
LINKS
www.djeneba-aduayom.com
www.instagram.com/djeneba.aduayom