Recently updated on August 3rd, 2018 at 05:40 pm
Nigerian documentary photographer, Yagazie Emezi, has been awarded the Inaugural Creative Bursary Award by Getty Images.
The 26-year-old is among the six recipients selected by an industry-leading panel of the international photo curating platform to get amounts between $2,000 and $5,000.
Other recipients include Neema Githere from Kenya; Oriana Koren, Jeremy Dennis, Donavon Smallwood and Tara Sellios from the United States of America.
Yagazie Emezi came in joint second place with Neema Githere for a prize sum of $3,000.
In the words of Yagazie Emezi on receiving the Creative Bursary Award:
“Ready for the challenge and looking forward to seeing how we make use of this opportunity to tell more of our necessary stories.”
She began her journey as a self-taught photographer in early 2015 and has since been commissioned by Al-Jazeera, New York Times, Vogue, Refinery29, Everyday Projects, and UNFPA.
The Vlogger and a graduate of Cultural Anthropology and African Studies from the University of New Mexico came into limelight for her continuous project ‘Another Tale by Moonlight’.
She returned to Lagos from the United States of America (USA) in 2014, to ‘document life in Nigeria as it truly is’.
Emezi has worked on several projects including ‘Felaberation’ and the Lagos Fashion Week.
In 2017, Yagazie Emezi was a participant in the World Press Photo Masterclass West Africa and is a contributor to Everyday Africa.
Getty Images Inaugural Creative Bursary Awards was established in October 2017, to support emerging photographers, who must be under 30 or have been pursuing professional photography for less than three years.
The annual $40,000 Bursary will enable them to realise commercial photographic projects.
