En Foco Announces Nueva Luz summer 2023 issue curated by Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz & featuring the 2023 Photography Fellowship Winners
Available May 18, 2023, in print and online with essays by Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz and photographer/writer Laylah Amatullah Barrayn

Bronx, NY - En Foco is pleased to announce Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz as curator of its summer issue Nueva Luz and an accompanying exhibition. Now in its thirty-eighth year, the journal features the work of ten early-career photographers of color selected to receive the En Foco Photography Fellowship. The issue will also include an essay by photographer and writer Laylah Amatullah Barrayn entitled, “Reimagining Purpose and Legacy Through Movement.”

As Raimundi-Ortiz writes in her curatorial statement: "What struck me immediately across the selections I viewed during my studio visits with each of the artists was a sense of lift—elevation—to be more precise. While many of the subjects are captured within hostile architecture and landscapes, the level of reverence for the sitters is palpable through the lens.
         
These are real people living real lives, attempting a semblance of normalcy within the harsh lighting in a crab processing plant, having una cerveza fria (a cold beer) in a humble watering hole in a Southwestern community, or the familiarity of densely crowded neighborhoods. We know these places, spaces, and faces. Our individual lived experiences when applied to viewing this work pierces the veil and stretches us past the frame."

The 2023 En Foco Photography Fellowship awardees include Ángel Añazco, Tanya Bindra, Samantha Box, Ryan Frigillana, Pratya Jankong, Thalia Juárez, Ashley McLean, Eduardo L Rivera, Mateo Ruiz Gonzalez, and Ana Vallejo. Now in its third year, the Media Arts Work-in-Progress Award engages the expanding language of photography and consideration for artists of color engaged in more inclusive forms of media-making.This year's recipients include Sean-Josahi Brown, Marília Gurgel, Zoë Marie Jimenez, Nancy Ma, and Daisy Ruiz.

The accompanying exhibition F[ull] Stop, also curated by Raimundi-Ortiz, will be on view from May 18 to June 30, 2023, at WallWorks NYC, 15 Canal Place, The Bronx, New York, 10451. An opening reception will take place on May 18, 2023, from 6 to 8 PM, where the new issue will be available for purchase. Viewing is available from Tuesday to Thursday by booking an appointment at https://www.wallworksny.com/book-online or emailing [email protected].

About the curator: Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz (she/her, they/them) is an interdisciplinary visual artist whose work pulls from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European portraiture, comic books, sketch comedy, folkloric dance, and installation to address race, bias, trauma, and healing. Her work has been exhibited at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Arts and Design, New York, New York; Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Gyeongnam Art Museum, Changwon, South Korea; Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, San Juan, Puerto Rico, among others.She earned her MFA from Rutgers University Mason Gross School of Art, New Brunswick, New Jersey.

About the essayist: As a documentary and portrait photographer, Laylah Amatullah Barrayn (she/her) focuses her inquiries on the cultures and identities within the global Black diaspora with a special interest in memory and the lived experiences of women. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, National Geographic, NPR, Vogue, and The New Yorker. Barrayn’s monograph, We Are Present: 2020 in Portraits, was published with the support of Magnum Foundation. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and she is a recipient of numerous grants. Barrayn is currently completing a book on contemporary Black photographers. She holds an MA from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts,New York, New York.