Justin Maxon, the winner of the 2012 Alexia Foundation professional grant will receive a $15,000 grant toward the completion of his project which aims “to shed light on the frightening reality of how many murders go unsolved every year in America.”
asmine Rasheed-Bacon, 6, consoles her cousin, Breonna Starkey-Bacon, 6, after she went into a closet to cry because of a disturbance in the house. The two cousins are very close and rely on each other for support. The girls live in a dangerous neighborhood called the Sun Village in Chester, which is notorious for its drug trafficking and drug related crime. Photo by Justin Maxon
“… to shed light on the frightening reality of how many murders go unsolved every year in America.”
Justin Maxon is an independent documentary photographer living in San Francisco. Maxon has received numerous awards for his photography, from competitions like World Press Photo, UNICEF Images of the Year, POYi, and NPPA’s Best of Photojournalism. He won the Deeper Perspective Photographer of the Year at the 2008 Lucie Awards, the same year he was named one of PDN’s 30 Emerging Photographers to Watch. He was selected to participate in World Press Photo’s 2010 Joop Swart Masterclass. Maxon was also the second place student winner in the 2008 Alexia Foundation competition. He is one of only two photographers to have earned Alexia Foundation grants as a student and professional.
There were 191 professional applications this year, which the judges narrowed down to three finalists.
In addition to Maxon’s grant award as the professional winner, Kathryn Cook earned a Judges Special Recognition award and will receive special grant funding from Aphrodite and Peter Tsairis, the co-founders of the Foundation, to complete her project “Memory of Trees,” which “explores the aftermath of the ‘denied’ 1915 Armenian Genocide in Ottoman Turkey, and the reality of living as an Armenian in Turkey today.”
An Armenian woman attends a service at the Holy Mother of God Armenian Church in Vakifli, Turkey. Less than 30 Armenian families populate the small town and surrounding area, which is located near the Turkish border with Syria. Although Armenians are allowed to celebrate their traditions in Turkey, many fear asserting their ethnic origins, which means living in near silence to avoid trouble. Photo by Kathryn Cook
Kathryn Cook is a documentary photographer based in Rome, concentrating on personal projects and assignments. She is represented by Agence VU, a Paris photo agency. A graduate of the University of Colorado at Boulder, she began her career with the Associated Press in 2003 in Panama. In 2006, she left the AP to do an independent project covering Evo Morales’ campaign to become Bolivia’s first indigenous president and to document his support base. She then moved to Istanbul to begin work on the project that has received the Judges Special Recognition award.
The competition was judged at Syracuse University on Feb. 25, 2012. The judges were Whitney Johnson, Director of Photography at The New Yorker, Kira Pollack; Director of Photography at Time; and Maggie Steber, independent documentary photographer.
