Gabriela Bulisova | Sondheim Prize Recipient
Image: Gabriela Bulisova, from “Home Front,” courtesy the artist.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Corcoran College of Art + Design congratulates Gabriela Bulisova, a faculty member in both the Photography and New Media Photojournalism degree programs, who was announced as the recipient of the Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize on Saturday, July 13. As winner, Bulisova will receive a $25,000 prize.
Bulisova’s winning multimedia project, “Time Zone,” depicts Lashawna Etheridge-Bey, a 39-year-old Washington resident who was released from prison in December 2011 after 18 years behind bars. The work includes photographs as well as a 12-minute video featuring interviews with Etheridge-Bey and her mother, children and friend. The work focuses on Etheridge-Bey’s effort to recreate a life after imprisonment.
Bulisova said: “I am humbled and extremely honored by the jurors’ decision. For the past four years I’ve been working on the issues of incarceration and reentry in Washington, D.C., and I am eager and excited to continue exploring what I perceive is one of the most important civil rights issues of our time. This prize will help me do that.”
Bulisova was among six finalists, including Larry Cook and Louie Palu, both of whom have been shown in exhibitions at the Corcoran. An image from Palu’s “Home Front” project, depicting U.S. Marine Gysgt. Carlos “OJ” Orjuela, serves as a key image for “WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath”, now on view at the Corcoran Gallery of Art through September 29.
This summer, the Corcoran College of Art + Design awarded Bulisova a Faculty Development Grant, supported by Constance Bergfors, a longtime supporter of the Corcoran. The grant will support Bulisova’s current project, “Take and Give: Victims and Offenders in Dialogue.”
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Gabriela Bulisova is a documentary photographer from the former Czechoslovakia, based in Washington, D.C. She carries her camera to the world’s marginalized places, including Chernobyl, Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria, to give voice to those who have been silenced.
Bulisova has received numerous recognitions and awards, including the Open Society Institute’s Documentary Project’s Moving Walls 18; the Corcoran School of Art and Design Faculty Grant Award; the Aperture Portfolio Review Top Tier Portfolios of Merit; the CEC ArtsLink Projects grant; the Puffin Foundation Grant; the PDN Annual Photography Competition Winner in Student Category award; and the CANON “Explorer of Light” award. Bulisova was a participant at the Eddie Adams Workshop for emerging photographers and a graduate fellow at the National Graduate Photography Institute, Columbia University, New York, N.Y.
She is a member of the Metro Collective and the Women Photojournalists of Washington. In 2005, Bulisova was awarded the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Photography and Digital Imaging from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore. For a full biography and portfolio, visit http://www.corcoran.edu/faculty/gabriela-bulisova.