The Everyday Projects grant

The Everyday Projects is excited to announce our 2023 winners

Congratulations Mihaela Aroyo and Jaír F. Coll!

At the core of The Everyday Projects’ mission is a belief in supporting photojournalists from diverse backgrounds as they develop their craft. In an effort to help provide this vital support, The Everyday Projects is awarding grants to Mihaela Aroyo and Jaír F. Coll to help each of them work on a long-term project in their community.

In addition to receiving $6,000 each, the grantees will receive mentorship for the duration of their projects from photographer Kiana Hayeri and photo editor Jennifer Pritheeva Samuel.

Mihaela Aroyo

Varna, Bulgaria
@mearoyo | mihaelaaroyo.com

Root is a project that explores the feeling of identity of the Bulgarian diaspora living in the historical region of Bessarabia, within Moldova and Ukraine, focusing on the community’s traditions and daily life and revealing the multi-layered cultural and political context of the area.

What shapes the identity of Bessarabia, an area that changed its nationality eight times over the last two centuries? Bounded by the Prut river to the west, Dniester river to the east, and the Danube delta to the south, Bessarabia is the homeland for a handful of ethnic minorities. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union the area has been divided between Moldova and Ukraine. Before that, Bessarabia was used as a bargaining chip in the peace treaties that followed wars of 19th and 20th centuries in Europe.

While their motherland was under Ottoman rule, tens of thousands of Bulgarians migrated to the flat Bessarabian steppe. Here they have put down roots and absorbed from the cultures of other peoples. But to this day they have preserved their native language and traditions in their stepmother country.

Today Bessarabia is home for 300,000 Bulgarians. The population, however, is melting at a rapid pace, and the war in Ukraine inflicts changes on their lives every day. The post-Soviet shock is still being felt in this economically neglected region, from which people are again migrating in search of a livelihood in larger cities or abroad. Although nothing special happens in Bessarabia, the people who remain feel special and take pride in their ability to preserve the traditions of their ancestors.

Jaír F. Coll

Cali, Colombia
@jaircoll | visura.co/coll

Anyone who practices breakdance is known as a B-boy or B-girl. For this visual project, they are B-migrants, a wordplay to talk about the Venezuelan migrants who practice this discipline in Colombia.

“My story is embodied in the asphalt. Being a migrant and a B-boy means facing the street. My dance is engraved on the corners of Medellín,” says Gabriel Arocha, one of the 2.8 million Venezuelans who have settled in Colombia and for whom dance is their true territory.

The B-Migrant project began in December 2021, when l was walking through the streets of Cali and became interested in a group of young people doing acrobatics. One of them was Alexander Roque, a B-Boy from Valencia, Venezuela, who told me: “I emigrated for art.” It was a reflection that affirmed that the diaspora is not only linked to survival. The project grew from there with guidance from Semillero Migrante, an initiative that supports visual stories about migration.

B-Migrant aims to strengthen the visual and investigative work of how breakdance brings together experiences that present art as a territory without borders, connecting ways of feeling and being in the world. This will be made possible by following three Venezuelan dancers based in Colombia: Daniel Guerra, founder of the breaking school Risk Boys for children in Cali; Laura Mámbel, B-girl and entrepreneur in Medellin; and Jesus Quintero “Rela”, B-boy and mechanic in Bogotá.

Finalists

We would also like to congratulate the six photographers who were named as finalists.

Ebrahim Alipoor | @ebrahim_alipoor | ebrahimalipoor.com

Fatma Fahmy | @fatmah.fahmy

Ksenia Kuleshova | @ksukuleshova | kuleshova.de

Adra Pallon | @adrapallon | adrapallon.com

Azad Amin Rashti | @azadamin | azadamin.com

Mitar Simikic | @mitar.simikic | mitarsimikic.com

Grant Selection Committee