We are thrilled to announce the 10 finalists of the 2024 Richards Family Prize. A huge thank you to the hundreds of artists who submitted their incredible works for consideration and to Aline Smithson for carefully reviewing every single one of them.
Smithson remarks: “This was truly one of the best groups of submissions I’ve seen in a long while. There was so much significant work submitted that it was almost impossible to narrow hundreds of projects down to one. Thank you to all who submitted for elevating the craft with such powerful, personal, and meaningful projects that make me so excited to be part of this special community of seers and thinkers. Thank you also to the Griffin Museum of Photography for establishing this incredible award.”
2024 Richards Family Prize Winner | Izabella Demavlys
Izabella Demavlys is a Swedish born photographer and filmmaker based in NYC. She studied photography at the Royal Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, as well as Parsons School of Design in New York. For many years she focused on fashion photography, but in the fall of 2009, she decided to travel to Pakistan to pursue documentary work about women who had suffered brutal acid attacks.
Her work has been published in Vogue, Marie Claire, The New York Times, WSJ and VICE.
2024 Finalists
Yorgos Efthymiadis | The Lighthouse Keepers
Yorgos Efthymiadis is an artist/curator from Greece who resides in Somerville, MA. A board member of Somerville Arts Council and chair of the Visual Arts Fellowship Grants since 2017, Efthymiadis is also a reviewer for the Lenscratch Student Prize Awards since 2023 and finds it very fulfilling to help fellow photographers and give back to the photographic community.
An awardee of the Artist’s Resource Trust A.R.T. Grant in 2024, a finalist for the 2017 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship, and the recipient of the St. Botolph Club Foundation 2017 Emerging Artist Award, Efthymiadis has exhibited nationally and internationally and is represented by Gallery Kayafas in Boston.
In 2015 he created a gallery in his own kitchen, titled The Curated Fridge. The idea behind this project is to celebrate fine art photography and connect photographers with established and influential curators, gallerists, publishers and artists from around the world through free, quarterly curated calls. The Curated Fridge recently celebrated 9 years of exhibitions, featuring more than 1500 artists in 38 shows juried by 44 guest curators.
Yuki Furusawa
Yuki Furusawa is a Japanese photographer and book artist, based in both Hong Kong and Japan. Furusawa discovers strong emotional feelings revealed by the intimacy of her close relationships with her family. She creates artist books that use various textured media, which are dependent on her emotional response. The familiar physicality of the book is essential in her intimate works.
Furusawa graduated from Savannah College of Art and Design Hong Kong in 2017 with Master of Arts in Photography. Her work has exhibited in Hong Kong and Japan. She participated in Hong Kong Photo Book Fair 2016. Her work is part of the SCAD Library Permanent Special Collection.
Pia Paulina Guilmoth
Pia-Paulina Guilmoth lives and creates art in rural central Maine. She is a working-class transgender woman who resides with her girlfriend and two cats in a small, treehouse-like space inside a very old shoe factory on the bank of the Sandy River.
In her free time, Pia enjoys laying in the dirt, holding her friends, and trespassing into abandoned houses and barns. Her work is primarily about harnessing beauty as a form of resistance in a world full of terrors. While creating art, she reflects on themes such as class, gender, euphoria, dysphoria, and the ways queer community can flourish in rural areas.
Her current project, Flowers Drink the River, portrays the queer community she belongs to in rural central Maine and explores her search for magic and beauty in the landscapes surrounding her home.
Alena Grom
Ukrainian artist and documentary photographer Alena Grom was born in Donetsk. In April 2014, she was compelled to leave her hometown due to the military conflict in Eastern Ukraine. Since 2017, she has resided in Bucha, a town near Kyiv. Following the full-scale invasion of Russia in February 2022, Grom and her family became refugees for the second time, but returned after Bucha was de-occupied.
These experiences have profoundly influenced her artistic practice. Photography has served as a lifeline for her, allowing her to confront the traumatic realities of war. Since 2016, Alena Grom has centered her work on locations affected by military aggression, capturing the lives of war victims, migrants, refugees.
Grom operates at the confluence of social reporting and conceptual photography, often working on her themes from the front lines. She perceives her “mission” as documenting the lives of individuals caught in the “gray zones” or near military conflicts. Through her photographs, she aims to inform the global community about the complexities of wartime life, the tragedies of
Importantly, her images do not exist merely as illustrations of sorrow or grief. One of her primary themes is the persistence of life amidst adversity.
Alena Grom has received recognition as a laureate and winner in numerous international photography contest:
Rodrigo Illescas
Rodrigo Illescas was born in Bahía Blanca, Province of Buenos Aires, in 1983.
He is an architect and photographer. He published the books, “Asimismo, todo aquello” (2007), declared of Cultural Interest by the National Secretariat of Culture; and “Razia” (2011).
He is currently a professor at the University of Buenos Aires.
Awards (selection): Global GFX FujiFilm Challenge; 1st prize Felix Schoeller Photo Award; Leica Finalist, Oskar Barnack; Grand Prix, PhotoDays Festival, Rovinj, Croatia; 1st Prize, Portraits, PoyLatam, Mexico; 1st prize, Best Portfolio, “Transversalidades”, Portugal; Honorable Mention, Provincial Visual Arts Salon Florencia Molina Campos.
Exhibitions (selection): Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, Italy; Somerset House, London; Museum of Cultural History in Osnabrück, Germany; CCK, Argentina; among others.
Work in Collection: Museum of Arts and Crafts, Zagreb; National University of Villa María, Córdoba; Private Collections in London, Madrid and Andorra.
Pedro Ledesma III
Born in South Dakota and raised in a small town in Texas, Pedro has always appreciated wide, open spaces and small communities. Exploring the world and embracing his Korean-Mexican heritage have given Pedro a unique understanding of family and culture. From Texas public schools to MIT and Columbia University, Pedro’s education has been a constant source of inspiration and fueled his lifelong curiosity. His diverse background, including work on Wall Street, research in international development economics, and experience as a teacher, informs his understanding of global dynamics.
Pedro’s photography journey has evolved from documenting beauty in everyday moments to using his camera as a tool for social change, echoing the justice-focused themes he probed in economics. He explores the complexities of social and economic inequities, alongside his own identity in America as a mixed-race, Southern Baptist-raised, Ivy League graduate. Through his creative work, Pedro aims to spark positive change towards greater equality by exploring how these national issues unfold on the stage of small town America.
Matthew Ludak
Matthew Ludak is a documentary photographer and photojournalist focusing on long-term projects about economic disparity, de-industrialization, and environmentalism in the United States.
Published and exhibited internationally, in 2021 Ludak received an Artist Fellowship from New Jersey State Council on the Arts. In 2022 his work was shown in the Wisconsin Biennial at the Museum of Wisconsin Art and the Soho Photo Gallery in New York City. In 2022 he had his first solo and international exhibition in Braga, Portugal, as part of their annual Photography and Visual Arts Festival. In 2022 Ludak was invited to attend the prestigious Eddie Adam’s workshop in Calicoon, New York where he received the National Geographic award for his work. In 2024 Ludak was included in GUP Magazines FRESH EYES International 2024 Talent, as well as receiving an Award of Excellence from the Alexia Foundation.
Ludak’s work has been featured in The Washington Post, The Economist, TIME, Bloomberg, and Fox Business.
He holds a BA in History and English from Drew University, a Certificate in Documentary Studies from the International Center for Photography, and an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Wisconsin – Madison.
Emily Hanako Momohara
Emily Hanako Momohara was born in Seattle, Washington where she grew up in a mixed race family. Her work centers around issues of heritage multiculturalism, immigration and social justice.
Momohara has exhibited nationally, most notably at the Japanese American National Museum in a two-person show titled Sugar|Islands. She has been a visiting artist at several residency programs including the Center for Photography at Woodstock, Headlands Center for the Arts, Fine Arts Work Center and Red Gate Gallery Beijing. In 2015, her work was included in the Chongqing Photography and Video Biennial. Momohara has created socially driven billboards for For Freedoms and United Photo Industries. She lives and works in Cincinnati where she serves as the Interim Studio Arts Chair, a Professor and heads the photography major at the Art Academy of Cincinnati.
Xan Padrón
Galician photographer Xan Padrón (Ourense, Spain, 1969) received his first camera at the hands of the photojournalist Enrique Reza, who awoke in him a passion for the photography of the everyday, just as his father, the journalist Luís Padrón, awoke in him the patience to listen and observe stories.
After diverse street photography projects in New York City (Human City, Motion City, Visions of New York), in 2011 he began his acclaimed project, “Time Lapse”: a collection of portraits of various cities through the people who inhabit them. His series Time Lapse has been exhibited, among other places, at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City, The Pfizer Building in New York, and the Sala Valente in Spain. Xan Padrón’s artwork is held in corporate and private collections across the globe. In 2023, Padrón was invited by the MTA Arts & Design Program to exhibit at the Bryant Park subway station in New York City. His work has been featured in international publications such as New England Review, Die Zeit Magazine, and Photo World Magazine, as well as in the cover of academic anthologies like “Race, Class and Gender in the United States” (MacMillan, 2020) and “Personal Networks” (Cambridge University Press, 2021). His Time Lapses were also selected for the Art on Link program by the City of New York. Xan Padrón’s career as a photographer is deeply intertwined with his previous profession as a professional musician. For over a decade, he toured with his bass and his camera, capturing life surrounding the musicians he collaborated with. As a photographer of artists and concerts, he has worked in an official capacity for APAP (Association of Performing Arts Professionals, United States) and has contributed to publications such as Inside Arts and The Writer Magazine (United States).Xan Padrón shares his life with musician, educator, and writer Cristina Pato. Since 2005, he spends his time between Galicia and New York City and has his studio at Mana Contemporary (NJ).
