Awards & Competitions


First Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowships Awarded to Devin Allen, Harriet Dedman

February 1, 2017

By Conor Risch

© Harriet Dedman

© Harriet Dedman

From Harriet Dedman’s series “Beneath These Restless Skies,” for which she received a Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship. © Harriet Dedman

Photographers Devin Allen and Harriet Dedman have been awarded the first Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowships, the Foundation announced yesterday. The fellowships support “photographers, artists, filmmakers, and musicians working within the theme of social justice with short-term fellowships up to the amount of $10,000 each,” according to the Foundation website.

Allen, who earned acclaim—and a TIME Magazine cover—for his images of the 2015 protests in Baltimore in response to the death in police custody of Freddie Gray, was awarded a fellowship for his project “Through Their Eyes.” Allen’s project seeks to give Baltimore youth a voice through photography. He is giving young people cameras, holding workshops and organizing exhibitions of their work.

Dedman received the fellowship to continue her project “Beneath These Restless Skies,” which follows 24-year-old Harlem resident Trevor Brown and his family. The project “questions issues of identity and opportunity, 50 years after Gordon Parks,” Dedman writes in her project statement. Parks photographed the Fontelle family, who lived in poverty on the same block in West Harlem that Trevor Brown and his family now occupy. “Over 33 percent of this community live below the poverty line, significantly higher than New York City’s average,” Dedman notes. “Trevor Brown has limited social mobility or opportunities to move beyond an education secured in a post Civil Rights era.”

Gordon Parks Foundation Fellows are selected by the organization’s executive director and board of directors.

Related: Why TIME Chose an Amateur Photographer’s Image for Its Cover
Gordon Parks and Ralph Ellison in Harlem

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