Application Guidelines
About the Scholarship
The John Chervinsky Emerging Photographer Scholarship seeks to recognize, encourage and reward photographers with the potential to create a body of work and sustain solo exhibitions. Awarded annually, the Scholarship provides recipients with a monetary award of $3,000, exhibition of their work at the Griffin Museum of Photography, and a volume from John’s personal library of photography books. The Scholarship seeks to provide a watershed moment in the professional lives of emerging photographers, providing them with the support and encouragement necessary to develop, articulate and grow their own vision for photography.
View this link that will take you to another page on our website and will tell you more about John.
Eligibility Criteria
The scholarship is open to photographers who have produced individual works of photography and/or are in the process of producing bodies of work.
We are looking for candidates who are serious about photography, whose potential is emerging and whose photography will benefit from this scholarship. Candidates can be currently enrolled in a photography degree program if in their graduating year. There is no age limit. There are no residency requirements. There is no application fee.
Photographers without gallery representation who have not exhibited solo in a commercial gallery, academic gallery (except for thesis shows), galleries in organizations like the Griffin Museum, Houston Center for Photography, Center for Fine Art Photography etc. or a museum setting or have not received significant (over $3000) grant funding are eligible (coffee shop, community gallery, library, academic thesis exhibitions, etc. are eligible exhibition settings). Past awardees of the Chervinsky Scholarship, paid employees of the Griffin Museum or their immediate families, Griffin Museum board members and jurors’ immediate families and those immediate families of Griffin board members or jurors’ paid employees are not eligible.
This scholarship is not for well-established photographers. Well-established photographers are individuals in mid-photography-careers and are seen by the public and peers as distinguished in the field of photography and have many accomplishments as a photographer. Of note, receiving a Fulbright Scholarship would disqualify a candidate from receiving this scholarship. Producing a published (by a publisher) photo book would disqualify a candidate from receiving this scholarship. Self publishing does not disqualify a candidate.
Submissions
Submissions may be made directly to the Griffin Museum gateway only (now closed). You will be asked for a brief biography and artistic cv (a single PDF that includes both bio and cv. In the PDF title include Chervinsky and last name and first name.); a statement of artistic purpose/intent; a statement on the work supplied, and flattened rgb jpgs (1200 pixels on the longest side) of your photographs (minimum of 10/maximum of 14 photographs). Naming convention is Chervinsky_firstname_lastname-title.jpg.
Do not supply links. Our gateway will assemble your input into one area on our web host site and give the jurors the ability to go there to view and also download a pdf as needed. You will be able to insert text for artistic statement and project statement in the gateway application. No other means of submission will be accepted. All missing criteria will disqualify the submission. Emails will not be accepted as a method of submissions. It is recommended that great thought and effort be put into the artistic purpose/intent statement (see sample suppliedopens PDF file ).
It is recommended that you prepare all the elements of the application in advance. Do not start the application if you do not have time to finish it. Wait until you have time to complete the application in one session.
Scholarship Dates and Deadlines
September 1, 2021: Next Application period opens. Jurors will be Tricia Capello (first recipient of the Chervinsky Award), Bruce Myren (photographer) and Connie and Jerry Rosenthal of Rfotofolio. Apply Here (portal now closed until next submission period)
November 1, 2021: Next Application period closes. We will announce the awardee by January 15, 2021. We do not have the capacity to send nonacceptance notifications by mail or email. This is not meant to be disrespectful. We all do this scholarship facilitation, jurying and preparation in our own personal time.
Award
The 2020 jurors for the Chervinsky Scholarship awardee have chosen Tavon Taylor to receive the Chervinsky scholarship. The jurors would like to acknowledge their shortlist as well.
“We propose the opportunity to have a longer short-list so that we have a larger group of emerging artists who receive the encouragement of being short-listed for the award. As we discovered a larger pool of individuals who deserve to be finalists and have equally impressive work. We thought this would be a wonderful opportunity for more emerging artists to add this accolade to their CV’s and receive the acknowledgement that their work deserves.”
Logan Bellew
Becky Behar
Maria Contreras-Coll
Dylan Everett
Alayna N. Pernell
Kendall Pestana
Daniel Seiffert
2020 Jurors and their websites:
Michelle Rogers-Pritzl
The 2020 award for the John Chervinsky Emerging Scholarship went to photographer Tavon Taylor. View Tavon Taylor’s website.
The judges said, “Tavon Taylor shows an already robust practice as a recent MFA recipient with a collection of rich, cinematic imagery. He presents a powerful voice that communicates the complexities and intimacies of the artists experience as a queer Black artist. A look at the larger bodies of work solidified the world that he has built where tenderness and vulnerability reign supreme. Kinship, intimacy, and community runs through this work and Taylor both stitches together and unties these concepts with each shared interaction between photographer and subject.”
Tavon Taylor submitted The Last Rose of Summer for consideration for the scholarship. Taylor says of the body of work:
“The Last Rose of Summer was Inspired much by the injustice shown within the media in 2020. Over the last few months, I’ve focused on creating images of the people closest to me. I’ve started with single portraits of my loved ones, then I grew curious about photographs before my time. I came across a photo album stored deep within my childhood home. Full of ceremonies, the city, all the people I didn’t know, and all the stories untold, the richness spilled through each image. This compelled me to dive more into my own family’s history. Through stories from my elders and found images, I’m navigating ways to dissect my own family dynamics.”
Tavon Taylor’s Statement of Purpose:
“Within the last few months, I’ve started my photo and video-based project, The Last Rose of Summer. In this body of work, I am discovering my family’s history within the DC and Maryland areas. So far, I’ve done interviews, filed archived images, make images of my loved ones, photographed our surroundings, and more. There’s so much that I’m thinking about and planning for the blossoming of this project. I’m excited to get to know more about my ancestry. I would love to be able to properly document the richness and depth that branches back far before myself. Through discovering and sharing my own lineage, I hope to create inspiring imagery celebrating the lives and legacy of those who’ve once walked this earth. In this process of discovering moments that have come before me, I am discovering myself. The last rose of summer gives me the chance to proudly and boldly take control of my own narrative as a queer black man navigating in today’s social climate. In this process, I am celebrating the people in my family that I love and those that we’ve lost. In sharing these stories, with a larger audience, I hope to inspire people to value those closest to them.”
Image above of John Chervinsky © L. Barry Hetherington
The links below are to the 2016 – 2019 press releases and links to juror statement 2016.
2016 press releaseopens PDF file
2017 press releaseopens PDF file
2018 press releaseopens PDF file
2019 press releaseopens PDF file
2020 press releaseopens PDF file
