About Us

Our mission is to highlight and help facilitate
the power of photography to influence the world.

We help photography to be better understood,
created, utilized, seen, and saved.

PhotoWings is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to utilizing the power of photography to further deep thinking, communication, and action. Our extensive online content and PhotoWings Outreach Programs have a myriad of educational applications and possibilities.

Download a PDF of our PhotoWings Media Archive list here

Selected PhotoWings Outreach Program Partners and Grantees

The VII Foundation

The VII Foundation is transforming visual journalism by empowering new voices  from underrepresented countries and communities and creating stories that advocate change. Our partnership includes:

• VII Insider with its freely available in-depth personal presentations, business, and technical webinars, live events including the photo festival in Arles, and writing on photography’s role in the world
• Foundry Photojournalism Workshop which brings top-tier, free photojournalism education to the world
• VII Community in partnership with PhotoWings with ongoing education and support to networkof 1,000+ VII Academy and Foundry alumni, discussions, educational presentations, reviews, 1:1 mentoring, in-person global meet-ups, exhibition  and VII Insider presentation opportunities, Discord platform for regular exchanges
• Lost Rolls America’s extensive interactive curriculum for middle and high school students and Online “Parent Activities” for families to explore their photo archives created in partnership with Generation Human Rights and available on our website

• Explore VII Insider

Ashoka/Ashoka U

Ashoka/AshokaU addresses the world’s most urgent challenges with evolving solutions through its 4000+ social entrepreneurs in 95+ countries. Our partnership resulted in innovative content including:

• Self-Discovery Through Photography, an online webinar to advance changemaking skills
• A Changemaker campus competition that awarded grants internationally Several projects evolved into new PhotoWings-funded proposals

• Explore Self-Discovery Through Photography Webinar
• Explore InSights: Past, Present and Future Self Through Photography Projects

Blue Earth Alliance

Blue Earth Alliance’s fiscal sponsorship, administered by the Santa Fe-based non-profit CENTER, raises awareness about endangered cultures, threatened environments, and social concerns through photographers and their projects. Our partnership:

• Provided mission-relevant equipment and Project Photographer Business Training

Documented presentations and created interviews at 3 Collaborations for Cause events

• Explore Collaborations for Cause Videos

CatchLight

CatchLight leverages the power of visuals to inform, connect and transform communities. Our education partnership includes:

• CatchLight Local, a collaborative model for visual journalism that aims to advance trust and representation in local media through a shared visual desk supporting local newsrooms
• Four Visual Storytelling Summits with recordings on our website .
• Original interviews with CatchLight Summit presenters, Fellows, and Everyday Bay Area photographers
• A Toolkit for Artists Against the Infodemic
• A Field Guide to Visual Journalism

• Explore the PhotoWings + CatchLight Partnership
• Explore the 2023 CatchLight Visual Storytelling Summit

The Everyday Projects

The Everyday Projects is creating a new generation of storytellers and audiences that recognize the need for multiple perspectives in portraying the cultures that define us. Our partnership includes:

• Seasons 2-4 of The Essentials, online photo-based workshops created in partnership with Black Women Photographers
• A middle and high school photojournalism curriculum
• Development of The Everyday Projects website
• The Everyday Africa book and educational supplement, theater projects, and educational videos

• Explore The Essentials
• Explore The Everyday Projects Visual Journalism Curriculum

The Eddie Adams Workshop

The Eddie Adams Workshop (EAW), is a 4-day educational gathering where leading photography professionals teach 100 carefully-selected emerging photographers. Our partnership includes the following on our website:

• In-depth interviews with the Workshop’s remarkable faculty
• From Experience, a series documenting important lessons from their legendary careers
• Workshop presentations

Foundry Photojournalism Workshops

Foundry Photojournalism Workshop brings top-tier, free photojournalism education to majority world students and those from underrepresented communities in G20 countries a chance to learn from some of the world’s most well-respected photojournalists and photography professionals. Since 2011, we have:

• Created an extensive online library of original interviews, Lessons in the Field, and Faculty presentations
• Partnered on in-country and online events. In 2023, Foundry Faculty taught 94 students from 40 countries in 9 languages

• Explore the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop

Global Nomads Group

Global Nomads Group (GNG) fosters dialogue and understanding among the world’s youth by working at the intersection of cultural exchange, international education, and conflict resolution. Since 2015, our partnership has integrated photography and photographic thinking into the GNG Student to World curricula and, most recently, into online courses designed by the student-led Content Creation Lab. Photography has also been incorporated into Seat at the Table, a safe and inclusive place where global youth between the ages of 15 and 19 connect, make friends, and share their ideas and experiences.

• Explore the Global Nomads Group Curricula

Lost Rolls America

Lost Rolls America ensures the creation of a national archive of images from the public’s lost rolls of film and acts as a digital repository of visual memories on PhotoShelter’s unique platform. The project examines the heightened role photography plays in how we document and remember our personal and shared pasts. Our partnership with Generation Human Rights on the Lost Rolls America interactive curriculum makes it possible for middle and high school students to explore photography as a platform to discover and cement common experience across disparate backgrounds of place, time, age, and race. During the pandemic, we developed Parent Activities, online lessons for families to foster a deep exploration of their photo archives whether found in a photo album, loose in a shoebox, or stored in the Cloud.

Our Democracy Project

Our Democracy Project is a collaborative multi-media project about how Americans see democracy and the responsibility of citizenship, emphasizing news literacy, community engagement and visual exploration. In partnership with National Writing Project, we created:

• A curriculum toolkit now on our website with educational videos, social media and other resources for teachers to engage classrooms in cross-cultural conversations and reportage about everyday democracy in their communities PWMA

Photoville

Photoville amplifies and connects visual storytellers to a worldwide diverse audience through its free Photo Festival and Village bringing together 300+ photographers in 85 exhibits in Brooklyn Bridge Park and all five New York City boroughs (2 million visitors citywide in 2023) along with year-round activation of public spaces and community educational programming. We have partnered on:

• Photoville Festival Talks
• Festival Education Day
• Professional Development Labs
• Educator-Created Lesson Plans  and Educator Exhibition Grants, Youth Exchange Panels
• Family Photography Evenings
• Year-Round Education Artists Visits, Teaching Artist Microgrants
• Community Heroes public art project, Toolkit, and Outreach

• Explore the PhotoWings + Photoville Education Partnership
• Explore Resources from the Photoville Disability / Visibility Educator Lab

LOOK3 Photography Festival 

 "Peace, love, and photography." LOOK3 celebrated the vision of extraordinary photographers, ignited conversations about critical issues, and fostered the next generation of artists in its time. PhotoWings had been proud to partner with the festival, supporting video documentation of presentations for posterity and accessibility to a wider audience. Presentations can be viewed on our website.

• PhotoWings Feature: Look3 Festival of the Photograph
• 2013 Insight Conversation Videos
• 2015 Insight Conversation Videos
• 2016 Insight Conversation Videos

Eugene Smith Fund

The W. Eugene Smith Fund supports photographers whose work follows the tradition of W. Eugene Smith’s humanistic photography and dedicated compassion during his 45-year career as a photographic essayist. Our partnership will provides for:

• Photographer grants
• Interviews with past award winners