Check out these powerful images from the winners of the 2022 Leica Women Foto Project

Meet the talented female photographers honored with Leica’s third annual photo award.

By Jeanette D. Moses | Published Mar 8, 2022 4:44 PM EST

Inspiration

Samira, Beirut, Lebanon, 2021 — Samira is a third generation Palestinian refugee living in a refugee camp on the outskirts of Beirut. I have known her and her family since Samira was 5. She is now 21. I had been photographing her in the refugee camp for years but in the past 2 years we started leaving the camp and making pictures by the Mediterranean Sea. On our way back we saw the barbed wire and the flowers with the sea behind and we stopped. She said "I am outside but I am still trapped". © Rania Matar

A portrait of a women from Lebanon in a field of flowers — Samira, Beirut, Lebanon, 2021 — Samira is a third generation Palestinian refugee living in a refugee camp on the outskirts of Beirut. I have known her and her family since Samira was 5. She is now 21. I had been photographing her in the refugee camp for years but in the past 2 years we started leaving the camp and making pictures by the Mediterranean Sea. On our way back we saw the barbed wire and the flowers with the sea behind and we stopped. She said "I am outside but I am still trapped". © Rania Matar

Leica Camera has announced the three winners of its third annual photo award series, the Leica Women’s Foto Project. Rania Matar, Rosem Morton, and September Bottoms will all receive a Leica SL2-S camera, $10,000, and have their work shown at an exhibition at the Fotografiska New York museum.

The awards program was developed by Leica to elevate the perspectives of female photographers in a career that remains heavily male-dominated. Here’s what you should know about the work that the three winners will have on view at Fotografiska New York.

Rania Matar

Demi, Brummana, Lebanon, 2021 — Demi was injured in the August 4, 2020 explosions. I photographed her on the eve of the anniversary. She chose this location with all the broken glass and wrote the following: “We were mesmerized by the fragmented building, each broken piece told a familiar story a mountain away from Beirut. The simulated space induced catharsis one year after in the environment I now feel safest in, grateful to have an alternate set of photographs to commemorate August 4, 2020. All is blue for a time, glass shelters, reflections of pink sweeping skies – somewhere to float somewhere to flower and somewhere to die, I am still belonging.” *© Rania Matar*

Lebanese photographer Rania Matar traveled back to Lebanon to produce her award-winning project Where Do I Go? The project explores issues of personal and collective identity from female adolescence into adulthood in a country with an ongoing financial crisis that was ill-prepared to deal with COVID-19. The celebrated photographer was also a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow.

Yasmina, Forn Shubbak, Beirut, Lebanon, 2021 — Yasmina recently got her tattoo that says قوة (strength in Arabic). It was for her own empowerment. *© Rania Matar*

Rosem Morton

I am anxious and wary. This is the first time since the assault that I travelled alone to a place where I knew no one. (February 22, 2019, Columbia, MO, USA) *© Rosem Morton*

Rosem Morton spent a decade working as a nurse before diving into a career in photojournalism. In addition to the Leica Women Foto Project award, she’s won multiple grants from National Geographic for her work covering rape survivors. Her project Wildflower is a deeply intimate look that finds Morton turning the camera on herself to document her own experience after being sexually assaulted.

I saw these wildflowers blooming and thriving, something at that time I could not imagine for myself. Since then, I started calling this project, Wildflower, because I too wanted to endure.(November 11, 2018, Baltimore, MD, USA) *© Rosem Morton*

September Bottoms

New York Times Photography Fellow, September Bottoms’ project Remember September is a visual memoir focused on the photographer’s Oklahoma-based family that explores the effects of intergenerational trauma born out of sexual trauma and poverty. The work is extremely beautiful, but also grotesquely subjective—occupying a striking visual space.

The whole family gathers for the first time in over ten years. *© September Bottoms*

New VIII mentor program

In addition to the Leica Women Foto Project winners, Leica also announced three female photographers who were selected to take part in a new mentor program that will be run in collaboration with VII Agency. The three mentees are Brooklyn Kascel, Jackie Malloy, and Natalia Neuhaus. These three photographers will receive a year-long mentorship, VII Agency representation, a Leica Gallery exhibition, and a 12-month loan of a Leica Q2 camera.

Jeanette D. Moses

Jeanette D. Moses is a New York City–based filmmaker and photographer known for her intimate depictions of New York's creative communities. She’s been a contributor to PopPhoto since 2014, specializing in interviews, gear reviews, and all things analog.

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