CatchLight Global Fellowship 2026 Awards Three Photographers Documenting Marginalized Communities

The CatchLight Global Fellowship 2026 has awarded $30,000 grants to photographers Katie Baldwin Basile, Gulshan Khan, and Michael Lees, each documenting communities at risk of disappearing from collective memory. Basile, based in Alaska's Yukon-Kuskokwim delta, works with Yup'ik indigenous communities facing permafrost thaw and coastal erosion, using a co-creative method developed over ten years. Khan's project 'The Things We Carry With Us' traces Muslim communities in South Africa through legacies of the Indian Ocean slave trade, political exile, and racial segregation, juxtaposing vibrant festival scenes with archival documents. Lees, who survived Hurricane Maria in Dominica in 2017, creates films and photographs using Caribbean forests, ruins, and silences as narrative elements; his film 'UNCIVILIZED' premiered at the Locarno Film Festival 2024 and is used in university environmental and postcolonial studies. His upcoming project 'Behind God's Back' will portray the abandoned village of Petite Savanne and those who return. CatchLight, a San Francisco nonprofit, awards the fellowship annually to visual storytellers who redefine how images build relationships, communities, and archives.