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 conceptual portrait photographer, public speaker, and social activist based in Brooklyn, NY. Her photo series explore 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.

In 2019 Woolridge became a recipient of The Leica Women in Foto Award for her series,  “The Size of a Grapefruit,” a visual narrative based on Eva’s traumatic medical event which highlights the emotional stages from before, during and after her ovarian cyst surgery. Her objective is to address the accounts of her surgery, micro-aggressions and medical negligence Black women experience during medical emergencies, and the outdated information available in women’s reproductive health.

Woolridge continues to use visual narratives to convey a tone of a new, inclusive wave of feminine energy through her gaze as a queer, woman of color, while commenting on the social & cultural conditions of her communities.

Laura Roumanos

Laura Roumanos (she/her/hers) is a Lebanese Creative Producer hailing from Australia, serving as the co-Founder of Photoville, a non-profit organization devoted to cultivating a wide, diverse audience for visual storytelling by producing a free annual photo festival in NYC, activating public spaces, and connecting artists to a worldwide audience through educational programming and community events. Laura graduated from the prestigious National Institute of Dramatic Arts in Sydney, Australia and worked as a Theatrical and Events Producer before making the big move to NYC 18 years ago. Since then, Laura has worked in New York for the Manhattan Theatre Club, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Creative Time, The Future of StoryTelling, and the World Science Festival, in general management and senior producing roles respectively. Laura has also produced 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. For the past 10 years, Laura has co-produced the New York Photography Portfolio Reviews with the New York Times and also continues to consult, manage, and produce numerous theatrical shows, events and public programs, in addition to teaching the Business of Art course at the NYU Tisch School. She is currently the Creative Producer at Meta producing Instagram’s @design. Laura has built a reputation in the New York Arts scene as someone to go to for consultation and advice regarding public art and multi-disciplinary projects and events across all mediums.

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.