Hasselblad Heroines shines a light on talented female photographers from around the globe as they make their mark in the photographic industry. Through these spotlights, each Heroine shares their experiences in their career, challenges they’ve encountered in the industry and inspiration in their art through short video interviews.
By putting a spotlight on these creatives, Hasselblad Heroines hopes to encourage the next generation of female photographers to go against the grain and bring their creative visions to life.
Obscura Gallery is proud to have facilitated the 2nd Annual grant between one of our Obscura Gallery represented artists, Manuello Paganelli, and grantee Shayla Blatchford, a young Diné Documentary photographer based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
The small grant contributes to Blatchford’s ongoing Anti-Uranium Mapping Project which is documenting stories by those impacted by uranium mining along with the 500 abandoned uranium mines on the Navajo Nation and from when nearly 30 million tons of uranium ore were extracted from Navajo lands between 1944 and 1986.
SHAYLA BLATCHFORD, Radiation sign at Ambrosia Lake uranium mining area, New Mexico
The destructive impact from mining toxic resources like uranium and coal has endangered the Reservation’s natural resources, and gravely impacted the people who lived and live here. Blatchford wants to bring awareness to the ongoing environmental catastrophe created by poorly run government projects and unchecked corporations, and to advocate for and preserve her Native heritage.
SHAYLA BLATCHFORD, Looking down from the mesa where relatives once lived before the McKinley Coal Mine relocated residents in the early 70’s in Tse Bonito, Arizona.
This interactive photo documentary map is very personal to me. It holds the story of my heritage and the stories of my own family facing the impacts of living near a coal mine. Ultimately, this project serves as historical documentation of the uranium mining era, from a Native perspective. – Shayla Blatchford
SHAYLA BLATCHFORD, DeWayne Johnson, Program Manager at Navajo Uranium Worker’s Program at Diné College in Shiprock, NM.
Growing up in Long Beach, California, Shayla had little exposure to her Native heritage; this sparked a curiosity that continues to propel her work today. Her mother’s genealogical investigation was a launching pad that started her journey to establish a connection with her ancestors and their ways of life. Often we don’t know how to share our stories. It can be difficult to take a vision from paper to finished project. Shayla has the ability to help people tell their stories, cultural or commercial, and sees providing that service as a way to share instances of beauty with the world. Photography is about capturing moments. It is about seeing the smallness in the bigness of the world. She wants to subtly craft these moments into art while allowing the images to speak with their voice and not her own.
SHAYLA BLATCHFORD, The road up to the Lukachukai Mountains where 24 of the 32 abandoned uranium mines are not covered by the Kerr-McGee Corporation/Tronox cleanup settlement in Cove, Arizona.
While earning her BFA from Santa Fe University of Art & Design, Shayla’s primary focus was social documentary and photojournalism. Recently, her practice expanded to commercial photography for luxury product space Santa Fe Dry Goods, and fine art product photography for form & concept gallery, where she served as in-house photographer and creative director. Today, Shayla balances her time between freelance photography, ranging from portraiture to architectural and interior design photography, and her ongoing, major photo and storytelling series, The Anti-Uranium Mapping Project.
Donations directly help bring this project to life by covering costs for audio equipment and travel while in the field. If others want to contribute to Blatchford’s project, she has a Patreon page here in which to donate: https://www.patreon.com/shaylablatchford
SHAYLA BLATCHFORD, Jennie Yazzie walks down the old road from her childhood home that was covered in mounds of gravel by the McKinley Coal Mine in order to prevent her family from returning to their land in Tse Bonito, Arizona.
About the Grantor:
Manuello Paganelli offers a small photojournalism grant each year to a deserving individual and for the second year in a row, he wanted to focus on giving the grant to a young Native American photojournalist based in New Mexico. In addition to the monetary grant, Paganelli and Obscura Gallery offer the grantees feedback and review of their portfolio as well as advising on the project. Last year in our grantee research we discovered Shayla Blatchford’s work and for this year’s grant we introduced her work to Paganelli who found it equally important work. The 2020 grant was given to Sharon Chischilly last year for her photographic work on the Navajo reservation during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Manuello Paganelli of Italian-Cuban descent, grew up in Santo Domingo, Italy and Puerto Rico. After a mentorship with Ansel Adams, he worked as a photojournalist at the Chattanooga Times. In 1989, he began to explore Cuba, its land, its people, and its complex relationship with the USA. The work culminated into his first photo book, Cuba a Personal Journey 1989-2015 and was published in 2016. In 1995, he had his first solo photo show of this work on Cuba and that same year earned him a fellowship grant. The Washington Post wrote “Manuello Paganelli’s Cuban photographs are a brilliant window on a land and people too long hidden from North American eyes. Working in the tradition of Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank, Paganelli brings an artist’s eyes and a native son’s sensibility to his superb photographs.” In the early 1990s, he started work on his Black Cowboys series with a selection being featured at the Annenberg Space for Photography. In the summer of 2012, this same series was selected for the Photo Vernissage at the Manage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. His award-winning work has graced the covers and pages of many well-known magazines including GQ, LIFE, Bloomberg Business Week, Forbes, Newsweek, Men’s Journal, People, Time, Reader’s Digest, ESPN, Sports Illustrated and many more. Since 1996 Paganelli has been working on a documenatry across the Americas capturing indigenous people and their cultures.
2021 Hall of Fame Induction and Award Celebration Virtual Ceremony Online October 29, 2021, 6pm CST This year, IPHF will host a virtual induction and awards ceremony.
We congratulate Obscura Gallery artist Paul Caponigro for being the 2021 Lucie Award Honoree for the Lifetime Achievement in Fine Art Award!
The Lucie Awards is the premiere annual event honoring the greatest achievements in photography. The photography community from around the globe pays tribute to the most outstanding people in the field. Each year, the Lucie Advisory Board nominates deserving individuals across a variety of categories. Once these nominations have been received, an honoree in each category is selected. The Lucie Awards is the signature program of Lucie Foundation.
The honorees are presented with the Lucie statue during a spectacular evening at the Lucie Awards gala ceremony in New York. This year the Lucie Awards is held online October 26th, 2021.
“In SHE, the artist gives power to the young women who are the subjects of her images. Photographed in cityscapes, fields, forests, and bodies of water, they are in dialogue with their environments and own stories of empowerment.”
Obscura is taking part in the virtual New York Antiques Show starting January 29 and on view through Sunday, January 31st 6:00pm MST. This show usually takes place at the Armory in NYC every year and is the largest antique show in the world.
Richard Dansberger, Glass Patterns, 1960, Vintage Gelatin Silver Print, 9.75 x 7.5″
Obscura Gallery is proud to have facilitated a grant between one of our Gallery artists we represent, Manuello Paganelli, and the grantee Sharon Chischilly, a young Native American Navajo student at University of New Mexico for her photographic work on the Navajo reservation during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Sharon Chischilly for The New York Times Nathaniel Garcia outside his home near Window Rock, Ariz. The coronavirus has killed more than 500 people in Navajo Nation.
Manuello Paganelli offers a small photojournalism grant each year to a deserving individual and this year he wanted to focus on giving the grant to a young Native American photojournalist. With University of New Mexico student Sharon Chischilly’s name on the forefront of our minds because of her incredible Covid-19 work showcased most recently in the New York Times, we shared her work with Paganelli and he was equally impressed.
“I received the name of Sharon Chischilly through Jennifer Schlesinger, the owner/curator of Obscura Gallery. From there I read a NYTimes article and saw the work she has been doing within her Native community on the heavy told Covid-19 has taken on them. I was quite impressed by the maturity, seriousness and depth of her work” – Manuello Paganelli
My name is Sharon Chischilly. I’m a junior at the University of New Mexico and a student photojournalist at the New Mexico Daily Lobo. I began my professional journalism career at the Daily Lobo in August of 2019, and since the pandemic started my work has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Getty Images, and more. I have been documenting the COVID-19pandemic in the Navajo Nation since the first cases surfaced on the Navajo homeland in March. I would use this grant to start saving up for a second camera to help me document the scenes on the ground in my homeland.
Sharon Chischilly for The New York Times Cordaryll Tolino disinfecting shopping carts at Bashas’ Diné Market in Window Rock. Native American communities have consistently had higher positivity rates than the general population.
Sharon Chischilly for Navajo Times Miss Navajo Nation Shaandiin Parrish helps distribute homemade facemasks and hand sanitizer to families in vehicles on Aug. 20 in Chinle
Sharon Chischilly was born and raised in the Navajo Nation, an area that has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the last six months, Chischilly’s photography has been featured in the Navajo Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and other international outlets and as of November 16, she accepted a full-time position with The Navajo Times starting on November 23, 2020.
Sharon Chischilly for the Navajo Times Biden/Harris supporter Cindy Honani stands outside the Navajo Nation Council Chamber while holding a sign above her head to protect herself from the snow in Window Rock in late October.
Sharon has also been photographing the Election 2020, and one of her videos has garnered over five million views on Twitter. Captured in Albuquerque, New Mexico, she was in the area photographing the community’s reaction to the election results when she caught sight of Ashkia “Kia” Randy as he left his car idling and jumped out onto Downtown Central Avenue to spontaneously perform a portion of a men’s northern traditional storytelling dance. Trujillo’s dance was part of a larger community celebration in honor of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s defeat of Donald J. Trump in the 2020 presidential election. The dance is one that has been done for generations “to depict a successful hunt or a victorious battle” depending on the dancer, Trujillo said to the Daily Lobo in an interview. Sharon Chischilly captured the moment on video and posted it to her Instagram and Twitter accounts where the video had garnered 240,000 likes, over 34,000 retweets and more than 9,000 overwhelmingly positive comments. A number of verified Twitter users shared the video, including the rapper Common, Congresswoman Deb Haaland and actor and Indigenous rights activist Mark Ruffalo.
Manuello Paganelli of Italian-Cuban descent, grew up in Santo Domingo, Italy and Puerto Rico. After a mentorship with Ansel Adams, he worked as a photojournalist at the Chattanooga Times. In 1989, he began to explore Cuba, its land, its people, and its complex relationship with the USA. In 1995, he had his first solo photo show of his work on Cuba and that same year earned him a fellowship grant. The Washington Post wrote “Manuello Paganelli’s Cuban photographs are a brilliant window on a land and people too long hidden from North American eyes. Working in the tradition of Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank, Paganelli brings an artist’s eyes and a native son’s sensibility to his superb photographs.”
In the early 1990s, he started work on his Black Cowboys series with a selection being featured at the Annenberg Space for Photography. In the summer of 2012, this same series was selected for the Photo Vernissage at the Manage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. His award-winning work has graced the covers and pages of many well-known magazines including GQ, LIFE, Bloomberg Business Week, Forbes, Newsweek, Men’s Journal, People, Time, Reader’s Digest, ESPN, Sports Illustrated and many more.
“Home on the Range: An Artistic Exploration of Cowboys in the Southwest presents the work of four contemporary photographers — Joan Myers, Kurt Markus, Manuello Paganelli, and William Albert Allard — as well as historic photos by Huffman and Elsa Spear Edwards Byron. Their imagery captures more than a century of changes in the Western landscape and the ranching life, and challenge our ideas of the West as an American idyll.” – Michael Abatemarco, Pasatiempo, October 9, 2020
Join us online June 27– 28 for photo l.a.’s first-ever virtual photo fair, Virtual Collect + Connect. Obscura Gallery has 32 prints for sale by our artists in our virtual booth, and it should be an exciting weekend of virtual talks and programs.
SUSAN BURNSTINE, Beyond Mt. Lee, 2019, 16 x 16″, Hand varnished, archival pigment ink print, edition of 15.
Photo l.a. has reimagined the traditional fair space to digitally present over 70 exhibitors via interactive, 3D booths accessed via the Whova app and housed on the photo l.a. website. We are thrilled to be a part of this virtual edition!
The Lannan Foundation Lannan Meeting House 313 Read St, Santa Fe, NM
Obscura Gallery photographer, author, and activist Michael Berman will speak about his recently released book Perdido, published by the Museum of New Mexico Press. Michael will be joined by co-thinker, rancher, and environmentalist Valer Clark.
MICHAEL BERMAN, Perdido, Cross, 2015, two sizes available
Michael Berman’s new book, Perdido: Sierra San Luis, is a journey in photographs and stories about a complicated landscape on both sides of the Mexico-U.S. border, where the natural world has been compromised and where survival depends on a complexity of relationships. The event takes place at The Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe, address above. If you are interested in viewing prints from this book, please stop by Obscura Gallery to view Michael’s portfolio.
MICHAEL BERMAN, Perdido, dripping water, 2015, three sizes available
