Lenscratch 2025 Art + History Award
Submissions DUE March 10, 2025 (by midnight)
Submit work to the First 2025 Lenscratch Art + History Competition. We are looking for new work made within the last five years that highlights the connection between Art and History. Topics can stay close to the heart, touch on communities, or be on a grander, more universal scale. Please submit a group of thought-provoking photographs that explore the complex connections between the past, the present and – ultimately – our future.
1st place: $500
2nd place: $300
3rd place: $200
Two to Three Honorable Mentions
Submissions DUE March 10, 2025 (by midnight)
Winners will be featured in five to six posts March 31 – April 4/5, 2025
Required Materials:
Link to your project on your website (preferred)
10 images from your project
(IF not on your website, please keep contained in one URL)
3rd person 200 word bio (or less)
1st person 250 word statement (or less)
Jurors: Jeanine Michna-Bales and Sandy Sugawara
Jeanine Michna-Bales
Jeanine Michna-Bales (American, b. 1971) is a visual storyteller working in the medium of photography. Her work explores the impact of cornerstone relationships on contemporary society—the bonds with ourselves, others, communities, and the land we inhabit. Her work sits at the crossroads of curiosity and knowledge, combining documentary, fine art, and activism with disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, and environmental studies.
Through deeply researched photographic essays—often incorporating primary-source materials, Michna-Bales connects the past to the present to address societal disparities in order to foster dialogue that inspires viewers to reconsider how they engage with others and the world as a whole.
Michna-Bales’ work is held in permanent collections including the Archive of Documentary Arts, Duke University; Library of Congress; Museum of Fine Arts Houston, The Phillips Collection, among others. Her photographs have been exhibited nationwide and are currently featured in three traveling exhibitions, with a fourth set to launch. Her work has been written about extensively, including in three photo books and has been highlighted in The New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, and BBC World News, among other outlets. She has also been invited to give artist talks at over 50 institutions and festivals nationwide.
©Jeanine Michna-Bales, Ready for Battle, 2019 from the book “Standing Together: Inez Milholland’s Final Campaign for Women’s Suffrage” (2021, MW Editions).
Sandy Sugawara
Sandy Sugawara is a Sansei or third generation Japanese American. Her cross-cultural roots and her many years as a journalist inform her photography, which often explores history, cultural changes and memory. She has seen the power of photography to change perceptions and bring about social changes. She has worked as a congressional staffer, a journalist at the Washington Post, and a senior executive at Voice of America and the US Agency for Global Media.
Her photographs are held in public and private collections, and her work has appeared in several juried exhibitions around the country. She co-authored, with Catiana Garcia-Kilroy, a photo book about the Japanese American incarceration camps called “Show Me The Way To Go To Home.” The book, published by Radius Books, was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other libraries.
©Sandy Sugawara, “Distant Mountain = Freedom.” From the book, “Show Me The Way To Go To Home,” about the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War 2. (2022, Radius Books)
