Debi Cornwall

Leica Women Foto Project 2019 Awardee

Debi Cornwall (Brown 1995, Harvard Law School 2000) is a conceptual documentary artist who returned to visual expression in 2014 after a 12-year career as a civil-rights lawyer. Her visual work examines American power and identity in the post-9/11 era. Exhaustive research and negotiation were critical to her advocacy and remain integral to her work as an artist.

Publications including Art in America Magazine, European Photography Magazine, the British Journal of Photography, Hyperallergic, and The New York Times Magazine have profiled Debi’s work. She is a 2019 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow, a Harpo Foundation Visual Artist grantee, a Center for Emerging Visual Artists fellows, and a Duke University Archive of Documentary Arts Collection Award winner. Her last project, “Welcome to Camp America: Inside Guantánamo Bay,” has been internationally honored as both a book (Radius, 2017) and exhibition. Radius will publish her Leica Women Foto Award-supported work, Necessary Fictions, in 2020.

Yana Paskova

Leica Women Foto Project 2019 Awardee

Yana Paskova is a Bulgaria-born, Chicago-bred, Brooklyn-based photojournalist and writer. The spark that drives her is her passion for creative visuals, science, music, climate change, the economic and political state of the world, the beauty of the written word, architecture, anthropology, and the true sense of equality. Yana lets her camera define her geography, aiming to create photographs that combine unique aesthetics with a strong narrative, style with meaning — whether in a historic context or just beyond the surface of mundanity. Yana’s clients include National Geographic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, NPR, Getty Images, and Reuters, amongst others. She has received awards from PDN’s Photo Annual and American Photography, grants to further her projects from the Pulitzer Center, the International Women’s Media Foundation, Getty Images + Panasonic Lumix, and exhibits via ICP online and Bulgaria’s National Gallery of Art.

Eva Woolridge

Eva Woolridge (she/her), is an award-winning Queer, Black & Chinese portrait photographer, director, public speaker, and social activist based in Brooklyn, NY. Her photo series explores the sexual, spiritual, and emotional nature of femininity. In her work, she transcends surface-level labels of people of color by conveying strength, perseverance, vulnerability, and vitality using strong lighting and composition.

Woolridge is a recipient of the 2019 Leica Women Foto Project award for her series Size of a Grapefruit, and her work has been featured in publications such as Rolling Stone, Teen Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and Harper’s Bazaar, and has been exhibited in Seattle, Boston, D.C., NYC, and Berlin, Germany. She speaks nationally about photography and its relationship to identity, including a Tedx Talk, the Schomburg Research Center in Harlem NYC, The Scope Art Art, and as a keynote for the University of Maryland, College Park. Woolridge sat on the 2020 Diversity Advisory Council for Fuji Cameras of North America.

Laura Roumanos

Laura Roumanos is a Lebanese Creative Producer originally hailing from Australia. She is the Executive Director and co-Founder of Photoville, a non-profit organization devoted to reaching a wide, diverse audience by producing a free annual photo festival in NYC, activating public spaces, amplifying visual storytellers, and connecting artists to a worldwide audience through educational programming and community events. Laura graduated from the prestigious National Institute of Dramatic Arts back in Australia and worked as a Producer before making the big move to NYC 16 years ago. Since then, Laura has worked for the Manhattan Theatre Club, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Creative Time, The Future of StoryTelling, and the World Science Festival, in addition to producing several large scale theatrical shows for creatives such as Karen O, Bryce Dessner, Richard Reed Parry, Spike Jonze, Opening Ceremony and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus. Laura is currently a Coro Leadership NY Fellow and is committed to working with the New York Creative community on sustainable and equitable programs and initiatives.

Leica Women Foto Project

The Leica Women Foto Project serves to empower the female perspective and its impact on today’s visual stories. We believe the shape of a story is reactive to the storyteller’s perspective, developing a narrative that too often is reflective of individual truths. The Leica Women Foto Project encourages diversity and inclusion in visual storytelling to amplify voices typically underrepresented in photography, discovering the breadth of shapes formed by a single story.​ Conceived in 2019, the initiative has evolved to offer cash awards and business opportunities and Leica equipment to serve the female perspective in the world of photography.