The 2025 Women Photograph Grantees

Women Photograph is thrilled to announce the recipients of our 2025 grants: the Women Photograph Project Grants of $5,000 have been awarded to Teala Elise Avery, Chloé Azzopardi, Elsie Haddad, Nicola Muirhead, and Melissa Ann Pinney. The Women Photograph + Leica Grant of $10,000 has been awarded to Chinky Shukla. We received over 1,300 applications from women and nonbinary photographers around the world — thank you so much to everyone who sent in proposals! Congratulations to the photographers selected — you can read more about their projects and connect with their work below.

Thank you to this year's grant sponsors, MPB and Leica USA, and to our judges, Nydia Blas, Marina Chao, Caroline Hunter, Corinne Perkins, and Bertan Selim.

MPB is the picture-perfect camera platform: Earn extra cash selling us the gear you're done using today and save up to 40% on pro-checked used gear that will take your craft to the next level. Click here to get started.

Women Photograph
Project Grants

Nicola Muirhead

Bermuda | nicolamuirhead.com | @nmuirhead_photo | she/her

“Descendants of Summer” is an ongoing documentary that explores the complexities of identity, belonging, and historical reckoning in Bermuda—an island whose present is inseparable from its colonial past. Through portraiture, landscape, archival material, and oral histories, this work is rooted in collaboration with local elders, historians, cultural groups, and artists to reclaim, reassess, and preserve narratives that have long been marginalized or whitewashed. As a Bermudian, Muirhead has seen how clichés of paradise often disguise facts and undermine collective memory; but Bermuda’s story offers a magnified lens on the enduring structures of colonial power and resistance, gaining a greater understanding of the broader Atlantic world and our interconnected histories.

Chloé Azzopardi

France | petalemou.wixsite.com/azzopardi | @qloait | they/them

“Yellow Tiger on Blue Background” explores the coming-of-age of Taiwanese youth grappling with their dreams and the construction of their identity during geopolitical shifts. My French-Taiwanese cousins are 16 and 19 and have lived in Taipei since birth. I visited them in the aftermath of the earthquake of April 2, 2024. In the space of a month, the island experienced more than 1,000 aftershocks. This unusual instability of the earth echoed the diplomatic blurring of international relations. This long-term project aims to highlight the nuances and complexities of the Taiwanese situation through the eyes of young adults. Documenting their transition from adolescence to adulthood, I am interested in how the current political situation influences their sensibilities and the construction of their identities as young men.

Teala Elise Avery

USA | tealaavery.com | @bealastudio | she/her

Inspired by a conversation between renowned author, scholar, and critic bell hooks and contemporary multimedia artist Alison Saar around multiculturalism, Teala’s new project will explore cultural dynamics and emotional connections among expats in Japan – as well as the energy and longing to be a part of something despite a different upbringing. Having studied and lived in Japan previously, her immersion in a different culture strengthened Teala’s sensitivities and knowledge required to live in another country as a young Black queer woman while continuing to pay homage to her roots.

Elsie Haddad

Lebanon | elsiehaddad.com | @elsie_h | she/her

Through collaborative photography, “Not Yours to Make” seeks to voice the physical and psychological transformation that women go through while trying to negotiate an abortion. The project offers a visual investigation of this defining experience and its aftermath in the face of the social and moral sets that coerce and dictate this decision in the cultural, social and legal context of Lebanon and the wider Arab region.

Melissa Ann Pinney

USA | melissaannpinney.com | @Melissa_Ann_Pinney | she/her

“Becoming Themselves” portrays students in Chicago Public High Schools over a seven year artist residency. What began in 2018 as a traditional photography project has evolved into a document of identity, community and urgent social issues. The portraits honor and commemorate teens who are marginalized and underrepresented. In this work we see students navigate through adolescence, a time characterized by challenge, possibility and transformation. The teens collaborate in the art-making by welcoming Pinney into their world, and their portraits encourage appreciation and a deeper consideration of the radiant young people in our public schools.

Women Photograph + Leica Grant

Chinky Shukla

India | chinkyshukla.in | @chinky_shukla | she/her

The project “When Buddha Stopped Smiling” documents the human and environmental aftermath of the 1974 and 1998 nuclear tests in Pokhran, a township in northwestern state of Rajasthan in India, where a quiet desert became a stage for power, pride, and paradox. It delves into the micro-histories of local communities, revealing stories of resilience, loss, and the constant fear of invisible nuclear radiation. Through portraits, landscapes, and symbolic visual narratives, the work captures the fragile interplay between memory, land, and the human condition.

Finalists

Notes from the Judges:

“Melissa Ann Pinney’s collaborative approach to portrait photography deeply resonated with the judges. Her project, ‘Becoming Themselves,’ offers an intimate glimpse into the lives of Chicago teens, capturing moments where they feel safe enough to reveal their true selves. This kind of authentic representation is especially meaningful for students in this age group, as they navigate the complex journey of self-discovery and identity formation.”

“‘Descendants of Summer’ investigates the histories of Bermuda's inhabitants; the Indigenous, the colonial and the enslaved. Like many Caribbean islands, the mesmerising landscape conceals a devastating history of violence and enslavement. Muirhead frames her story using the light and verdant colours that are typical of this region. She avoids common binary narratives within post-colonial history to show us the complexity of identity. I was drawn to the multi-layered storytelling and elegant portraiture.”

“In ‘When Buddha Stopped Smiling,’ documentary photographer Chinky Shukla sheds light on the enduring human cost of India’s nuclear ambitions. Centered around Pokhran, Rajasthan—site of the 1974 and 1998 nuclear tests—her long-term project documents the invisible scars left on desert communities still grappling with radiation’s aftermath. Through a deeply empathetic and participatory lens, Shukla captures the untold stories of loss, illness, and resilience among villagers who never gave their consent to history. Chinky's work amplifies their voices linking Pokhran to a global network of nuclear test sites where silence and suffering still reign.”

“Teala Elise Avery’s new project aims to explore an outsider’s sense of belonging in a new culture, and explore the ways in which we create familiarity and connection outside of our own experience. The jury was especially excited to support a young Black photographer’s investigation of cultural “other” — in an industry where that same lens has historically been wielded by white, western journalists.”

“All over the world, women’s reproductive rights are being challenged, restricted, and stripped away. This erosion of reproductive rights reflects broader patterns of inequality, where the freedom to make decisions about one’s own body is shaped by the power of patriarchy, race, class, and geography. ‘Not Yours To Make’ focuses on the examination of reproductive rights in Lebanon, where they are rarely open for debate. A series of Polaroid instant emulsion lifts that obscure identity, as receiving an abortion is punishable by 1-3 years in prison. The choice of what is hidden and what remains clear is in the hands of the subjects. The result is a powerful space of healing, bearing witness, and the reclaimation of your personal story and body.”

“In ‘Yellow Tiger on Blue Background,’ Chloé Milos Azzopardi photographs their young cousins in Taiwan, where they were born and raised. Made in the aftermath of the earthquake in 2024 and against the backdrop of continued political tensions between Taiwan and the Chinese government, Azzopardi’s pictures braid together stories of personal and political tumult and uncertainty. The jury was drawn to Azzopardi’s tender and poetic approach to exploring how a generation of Taiwanese youth—specifically adolescents on the verge of adulthood—understand their national identities even as they are still constructing their individual ones.”