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Film Photo Award – Fall 2021 Visionary Project Award: Odette England
©Odette England, from the series Your Distance Makes Me Close To You, 2021
Over the coming days, we are thrilled to present the recipients of the Film Photo Award from the Fall 2021 submi
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Torrance York: Art + Science Award – Honorable Mention
©Torrance York, Untitled, 0604, 2020 from the Semaphore project
In the Lenscratch call Art + Science Award: The Heart of the Matter, we asked photographers to consider a shifting perspect
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Alice Hargrave: Art + Science Award – Honorable Mention
©Alice Hargrave 2021, Lake Baikal, Russia, warming
In the Lenscratch call Art + Science Award: The Heart of the Matter, we asked photographers to consider a shifting perspective of our cu
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Benjamin Dimmitt: Art + Science Award – Honorable Mention
©Benjamin Dimmitt, Downstream 1986, 2020
In the Lenscratch call Art + Science Award: The Heart of the Matter, we asked photographers to consider a shifting perspective of our current worl
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Bremner Benedict: Art + Science Award – Honorable Mention
©Bremner Benedict 2021, Unnamed Spring, Moenave Road, Colorado Plateau, AZ Petroglyphs in the area suggest this was a dependable source of water for ancient peoples as well as present day
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Rebecca Cummins: Art + Science Award – Third Place
©Rebecca Cummins 2021, Spore Drift
In the Lenscratch call Art + Science Award: The Heart of the Matter, we asked photographers to consider a shifting perspective of our current world, pla
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Marcus DeSieno: Art + Science Award – Second Place
©Marcus DeSieno 2021, Recognition Patterns: A Coded Gaze
In the Lenscratch call Art + Science Award: The Heart of the Matter, we asked photographers to consider a shifting perspective of
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Rashed Haq: Art + Science Award – First Place
©Rashed_Haq 2021, Human Trials
In the Lenscratch call Art + Science Award: The Heart of the Matter, we asked photographers to consider a shifting perspective of our current world, placing
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The Foto Awards presented by Las Fotos Project: Veronica Monjaras in conversation with Cat Jimenez
©Veronica Monjaras
This week in honor of Latinx Heritage Month, we are celebrating a wonderful organization in Los Angeles, the Las Fotos Project, and The Foto Awards event taking place t
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The Foto Awards presented by Las Fotos Project: Thalía Gochez in Conversation with Paloma Shutes
©Thalía Gochez, Lillian in Inglewood for Bella Dona, 2019
This week in honor of Latinx Heritage Month, we are celebrating a wonderful organization in Los Angeles, the Las Fotos Project,
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The Foto Awards presented by Las Fotos Project: Kimberly Espinosa in Conversation with Bayley Mizelle
©Kimberly Espinosa, Child of Ancestors
This week in honor of Latinx Heritage Month, we are celebrating a wonderful organization in Los Angeles, the Las Fotos Project, and The Foto Awards
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The Foto Awards presented by Las Fotos Project: Smita Sharma in Conversation with Anna Grevenitis
©Smita Sharma, When she was 12, S. left her home in Narayanganj, Bangladesh, with a family acquaintance who promised to find her a job in Dhaka.
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- Book Talk with Caleb Cain Marcus
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![In the early morning of Sunday, September 15, 1963, four members of the United Klans of AmericaÑThomas Edwin Blanton Jr.,Herman Frank Cash, Robert Edward Chambliss, and Bobby Frank CherryÑplanted a minimum of 15 sticks of dynamite with a time delay under the steps of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, close to the basement.
At approximately 10:22 a.m., an anonymous man phoned the 16th Street Baptist Church. The call was answered by the acting Sunday School secretary: a 14-year-old girl named Carolyn Maull. To Maull, the anonymous caller simply said the words, "Three minutes", before terminating the call. Less than one minute later, the bomb exploded as five children were present within the basement assembly, changing into their choir robes in preparation for a sermon entitled "A Love That Forgives". According to one survivor, the explosion shook the entire building and propelled the girls' bodies through the air "like rag dolls".
The explosion blew a hole measuring seven feet in diameter in the church's rear wall, and a crater five feet wide and two feet deep in the ladies' basement lounge, destroying the rear steps to the church and blowing one passing motorist out of his car. Several other cars parked near the site of the blast were destroyed, and windows of properties located more than two blocks from the church were also damaged. All but one of the church's stained-glass windows were destroyed in the explosion. The sole stained-glass window largely undamaged in the explosion depicted Christ leading a group of young children.
Hundreds of individuals, some of them lightly wounded, converged on the church to search the debris for survivors as police erected barricades around the church and several outraged men scuffled with police. An estimated 2,000 black people, many of them hysterical, converged on the scene in the hours following the explosion as the church's pastor, the Reverend John Cross Jr., attempted to placate the crowd by loudly reciting the 23rd Psalm through a bullhorn. One individual who converged on the scene to help search for survivors, Charles Vann, later recollected that he had observed a solitary white man whom he recognized as Robert Edward Chambliss (a known member of the Ku Klux Klan) standing alone and motionless at a barricade. According to Vann's later testimony, Chambliss was standing "looking down toward the church, like a firebug watching his fire".
Four girls, Addie Mae Collins (age 14, born April 18, 1949), Carol Denise McNair (age 11, born November 17, 1951), Carole Robertson (age 14, born April 24, 1949), and Cynthia Wesley (age 14, born April 30, 1949), were killed in the attack. The explosion was so intense that one of the girls' bodies was decapitated and so badly mutilated in the explosion that her body could only be identified through her clothing and a ring, whereas another victim had been killed by a piece of mortar embedded in her skull. The then-pastor of the church, the Reverend John Cross, would recollect in 2001 that the girls' bodies were found "stacked on top of each other, clung together". All four girls were pronounced dead on arrival at the Hillman Emergency Clinic.
More than 20 additional people were injured in the explosion, one of whom was Addie Mae's younger sister, 12-year-old Sarah Collins, who had 21 pieces of glass embedded in her face and was blinded in one eye. In her later recollections of the bombing, Collins would recall that in the moments immediately before the explosion, she had observed her sister, Addie, tying her dress sash.[33] Another sister of Addie Mae Collins, 16-year-old Junie Collins, would later recall that shortly before the explosion, she had been sitting in the basement of the church reading the Bible and had observed Addie Mae Collins tying the dress sash of Carol Denise McNair before she had herself returned upstairs to the ground floor of the church.](https://lenscratch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/001-16th-Street-Baptist-Church-Easter-v2-14x14-150x150.jpg)
