Kashmiri photojournalist Sanna Irshad Mattoo, 27, has become one of the eleven Magnum Foundation’s ‘Photography and Social Justice Fellows’ in 2021.
The Foundation has called the fellows those who are “challenging injustice, pursuing social equity, and advancing human rights through photography.”
The fellows have been selected from 487 applicants to join a network of 57 other image-makers that have been trained through this program since 2010.
A former Multimedia Editor at The Kashmir Walla, Mattoo, who is based in Kashmir and currently working for Reuters, has described her work as: “The word shaheed (martyr) in Urdu also means witness. As a photographer, I take the work of being a witness as sacred. To me, it means respecting someone’s grief, their space to mourn, while also finding new, alternate and subtler ways to tell stories. It means not only having ethical guidelines, but using photography as ethics in practice.”
“This year’s selection process included former fellows, who reviewed the proposals of applicants working within their regions and areas of expertise. This program centers the potential for creative storytellers to lead and enact change,” read the statement by the Magnum Foundation.
