The PhotoWork Foundation is delighted to introduce the 2025 PhotoWork Senior Fellows! Beginning in May of 2025 these three exceptional artists will develop a photo book project over the course of six months with the guidance of their dedicated advisors.
Throughout this fellowship, these three artists will develop their book projects with the support of their advisors and insights from invited publishing professionals. Together they will explore every stage of the photo book process, including concept development, editing, design, production, and publication. By the end of the fellowship, each artist will produce a preliminary maquette, equipping them with the knowledge and foundation to pursue the publication of their first photo book. Along with their mentorship, each Senior Fellow will receive a $10,000 award and professional guidance from our Executive Director, Sasha Wolf.
We are deeply grateful to our jurors: Matthew Genitempo, Photographer and Publisher at Trespasser; Dr. Sarah Kennel, Aaron Siskind Curator of Photography at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; and Denise Wolff, Independent Book Editor and Former Senior Book Editor at Aperture. Their thoughtful review and discernment were instrumental in selecting this inaugural cohort of Senior Fellows.
Please join us in celebrating the 2025 PhotoWork Senior Fellows! Learn more about this group of photographers and their work below.
Michelle Arcila
Michelle Arcila is a Costa Rican/Colombian photographer living and working in Brooklyn, New York. She graduated from the School of Visual Arts in 2002 with a BFA in photography. Her work primarily focuses on family, motherhood, bicultural identity, and mental health. Her photographs have been exhibited and published both nationally and internationally; they also appear in a number of private collections. While she had to take time away from sharing her work publicly she never stopped creating work privately during her 10 year “break”. She currently divides her time between the Hudson Valley and Brooklyn, NY where she lives with her husband and two daughters.
Michelle will use her time during the Senior Fellowship to develop her project You Wouldn’t Be So Depressed If You Really Believed in God, while collaborating with her advisor to deepen her understanding of the photo book making process and create her first maquette.
Will Matsuda
Will Matsuda is a Japanese American photographer and writer focusing on his family and the environment. His work has appeared in The New York Times, National Geographic, and The New Yorker, among many other publications. His works have been exhibited internationally by Aperture Foundation and by Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York City. He is based in Portland, Oregon, where he was born and raised.
Matsuda plans to use this fellowship to develop his project, Hibakujumoku, which explores his relationship to Hiroshima, the bomb that killed his family there, and the ecological life that persists in the aftermath. Hibakujumoku refers to the trees that survived the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
José Ibarra Rizo
José Ibarra Rizo (American, born Mexico, b. 1992) is a lens-based artist based in Atlanta, GA. His work documents the migrant experience through themes of memory, identity, and place. As a PhotoWork Senior Fellow, he will develop his first book maquette, the beginning of a long-term project exploring Latinx/é migration across the American South—starting with his community and surrounding areas in Georgia.