December equipment delivery and microgrant recipient updates

December brought a quick trip to Florida to visit family allowing for a December equipment delivery. In addition to microgrants, fototazo organizes the delivery of equipment from the US to photographers in Colombia to give them access to US market prices as well as to equipment hard to obtain in Colombia. Under this program, photographers pay the full amount, but save on average 25-30% in comparison to Colombian prices. This trip a Western Digital 500GB My Passport portable external drive was purchased for Ana García, a student at Medellín's Fundación Universitaria Bellas Artes and a book entitled Contemporary Photography From the Far East: Asian Dub Photography was purchased for Juan Pablo Chavarría Vásquez, also a student at Bellas Artes.

There are a few updates on recent microgrant award winners to pass along as well. Zhuyi Palacio Gallego is featured in this month's F-Stop Magazine on Landscape (above). Mónica Lorenza Taborda Gutiérrez had an image included in the SALÓ INTERNACIONAL DE FOTOGRAFIA DIGITAL ANDORRA 2012 as part of the 3rd SPANISH ANDORRAN IBEROAMERICAN DIGITAL CIRCUIT 2012 (below). Additionally, both Oscar Ulloa and Daniela Serna completed their university studies this semester and their work was exhibited in the Museo Universitario of the La Universidad de Antioquia as part of the completion of their degrees. Congratulations to all four!

© Mónica Lorenza Taborda

fototazo Begins Mentorship Program

© Natalia Lopera

fototazo is launching a mentorship program as we start the new year. The program matches young, emerging Colombian photographers with mentors from across the spectrum of the photographic world - gallery owners, bloggers, academics, art directors and working photographers. The goal is to provide the mentorship photographers with commentary and advice on their work from professionals in the field and to expand their network and knowledge of resources beyond Colombia.

The process will be a semi-public one. Images from the photographers will occasionally be posted on this site along with commentary from the mentors under the belief that their advice and insight will frequently be useful to other photographers and seeing how they look at and talk about photographs will be of public interest.

© Oscar Ulloa

The program will begin with four photographers, each matched with two mentors:

Photographer: Oscar Ulloa
Mentors: Matt Johnston co-runs The Photo Book Club as well as Phonar; he is a Professor at the University of Coventry in England; Kevin Thrasher is a photographer based in Richmond, Virginia

Photographer: Natalia Lopera 
Mentors: Julia Schiller co-runs the site Actual colors may vary; Oliver Schneider co-runs the site Actual colors may vary

Photographer: Daniela Serna 
Mentors: John Edwin Mason runs the blog John Edwin Mason: Documentary, Motorsports, Photo History and is a Professor at the University of Virginia; Wayne Ford runs Wayne Ford's Posterous and co-runs The Photo Book Club

Photographer: Aura Lambertinez
Mentors: Charles Guice is Founder of Charles Guice Contemporary; Gwen Lafage is Founder of Gallery Carte Blanche

Bryan Formhals, Founding and Managing Editor of LPV Magazine, will be serving as a floating mentor and guest critic, periodically reviewing work from all four program photographers.

© Daniela Serna

The mentorship program photographers will be delivering new work to the mentors in roughly a month at which point some of the work and comments will begin to appear in subsequent posts.

© Aura Lambertinez

A Note from Daniela Serna, 3rd Microgrant Photographer

© Daniela Serna

We have received an email from Daniela Serna, our third microgrant photographer whose new Nikon d3100 kit was fully funded by the readers of fototazo, with a message to her donors.

To learn more about our microgrant program, please read the about fototazo page.

Her letter:

To the donors towards my grant,

I am truly grateful for your generosity, for believing in my work and for supporting me with your donations. This new camera will allow me to continue my projects and it will be helpful for me in all of my academic work.

To fototazo, thank you so much for supporting me, for allowing me to show my work and for connecting me to your microgrants.

Thank you very much,
Daniela Serna

Third Microgrant Fully Funded

The final donation needed to complete the funding of the microgrant for Daniela Serna was received during the two week summer break. A special thank you to all who helped to give a young photographer the opportunity to move forward in her passion and career through donations.

The next microgrant project will be launched shortly.

Microgrant Photographer 3: Daniela Serna

Age: 19
Location: Bello, Colombia
Request: Refurbished Nikon d3100 kit
Grant Status: $544 of $544 raised (100%)
Donate here

Daniela's statement: I was born in Medellín. I am 19 years old and currently live with my parents and my brother. I study visual arts at the University of Antioquia and belong to a research group named Mediators in Education at the Museum of Modern Art of Medellín where for two years I have also worked as a guide and taught workshops.

During my six semesters at the university I've had great interest in photography as a medium. At first I used photography only as a tool to record processes, but I have realized the many possibilities of the photographic image.

I've always had a great interest in books, not only for their literary content, but also as aesthetic objects. My current project focuses on documenting the objects or written notes that I find inside used books. What is found in a book speaks of the people who owned them, how they read them and the different ways they inhabited and transformed them.

Portfolio