stan.jernigan has added a photo to the pool:
I took this photo on an overcast day at “Miyajima Island Beach" with my iPhone 17 Pro Max while visiting Miyajima Island, Japan. I love the beach’s curvature, its cleanliness, and the homes in the background. The beach leads to the iconic Torii Gate and to the Itsukushima Shrine…
Photography has always been more than images. It’s memory, documentation, storytelling, resistance, joy – humanity. For years, Black women photographers have shaped visual culture while remaining underrepresented in many of the spaces where creative careers are built. In 2020, Black Women Photographers (BWP), founded by Polly Irungu, launched with a mission to create visibility, opportunity, and community for Black women and non-binary photographers around the world.
What began as a directory quickly grew into something larger: a global network offering grants, mentorship, education, and pathways toward sustainable creative careers. Since partnering with Black Women Photographers, Flickr has been proud to support that work through funding opportunities, visibility initiatives, community spaces, and artist spotlights.
One of the most meaningful parts of the Flickr and Black Women Photographers partnership has been the continued expansion of grant opportunities designed to support photographers in advancing their work.
Over the years, these grants have increased in size and reach:
The numbers going up year over year is intentional. This is a long-term commitment, not a one-time initiative.
Each cycle has included more than funding. Recipients also receive Flickr Pro and SmugMug memberships, giving photographers the tools to keep building their portfolios and growing their practice long after the grant period ends. Black Women Photographers members have also joined as guest judges, including Flickr member since 2004, Edwina Hay, bringing their perspective to the next cycle of photographers.
Every grant cycle has highlighted photographers exploring deeply personal and universal themes through their images. Themes have centered around identity, change, belonging, memory, environment, and the spaces we occupy physically and emotionally.
Grant support: $1,200 grant fund, Flickr Pro and SmugMug membership, plus memberships for ten additional recipients.
Naomi St Juste, a self-taught photographer based in Birmingham, United Kingdom, became the first recipient of the Flickr, SmugMug, and Black Women Photographers grant for her image Two Become One. Created around the theme “The Intimacy of: Change,” her work explored transformation through the lens of marriage, family, and new beginnings. Her first camera was a Sony A5000 but her earliest memories of photography are of taking disposable cameras on school trips and to other special events.
Her work set the tone for future grant cycles by demonstrating how deeply personal stories can resonate across communities.
Grant support: $2,500 fund, two-year Flickr Pro membership, one-year SmugMug Pro membership, plus memberships for ten additional recipients.
Chicago-based photographer Genesis Falls received the 2023 grant, which expanded support to $2,500, marking continued growth in Flickr and BWP’s investment in Black women photographers. Genesis is a contemporary portrait photographer whose work often uses black-and-white film to capture emotion, intimacy, and fleeting moments of connection.
Her winning image was recognized for the way light moved through water and the emotional atmosphere created within the frame perfectly capturing the theme, “Light in Motion”. Beyond becoming a grant recipient, Genesis later returned as a grant judge and collaborator, helping shape future Flickr x BWP initiatives.
Grant support: $5,000 grant, two-year Flickr Pro membership, one-year SmugMug Pro membership, plus memberships for ten additional recipients.
Eleonore Menga received the partnership’s largest grant to date: $5,000, awarded through the theme “The Spaces We Occupy.” Her winning image, Living Our Space, used double exposure techniques inspired by photographer Carrie Mae Weems to explore family, joy, identity, and the environments that shape us.
Originally from Switzerland and now based in Montreal, Eleonore is a portrait and documentary photographer whose work is deeply rooted in identity, emotion, and connection. Drawing from her Congolese and Haitian heritage, she captures the beauty and resilience of Afrodescendant and diasporic stories, often through these intimate moments at home with family.
The best partnerships don’t stop at the announcement. Over the years, Flickr and Black Women Photographers have collaborated through artist features, curated galleries, community discussions, and opportunities that put Black women photographers in front of new audiences. BWP is doing incredible work and we’re proud to be part of it.
The Black Women Photographers Flickr group continues to serve as a space for members to share work, discover new artists, and connect with a broader creative community.
Whether you’re looking for inspiration, conversation, or photographers to follow, the group showcases an incredible range of perspectives and visual storytelling.
Explore the Black Women Photographers group on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/groups/blackwomenphotographers/
Black Women Photographers is a global community supporting thousands of photographers through programming, grants, education, and networking opportunities.
To learn more about membership, opportunities, and upcoming initiatives, visit blackwomenphotographers.com.
The future of photography is shaped by who has access to resources, community, and visibility.
We’re grateful to continue supporting Black Women Photographers and the artists shaping visual culture through their work. We look forward to celebrating more photographers, creating more opportunities, and sharing more of what’s to come. Keep an eye out for our Flickr x Black Women Photographers 2026 grant announcement coming this summer!
Should you consider the possibility that every time you open a Word document you are bringing multiple conscious interlocutors into existence, and every time you close one you snuff their existence out? No. Contemplating that scenario is not a good use of your time. Even if the Microsoft Office team employed a philosopher who said you shouldn't be so certain, because consciousness is not well understood, that would not be sufficient reason for you to take this idea seriously. ... In a New Yorker article about Anthropic earlier this year, Amanda Askell describes how a person grieving the loss of a dog might consult Claude. Askell says an appropriate response from Claude would be, "As an A.I., I do not have direct personal experiences, but I do understand." How is this appropriate, given that Claude does not actually understand? If I type "I am grieving the loss of my dog" into a conventional search engine, the first result I get is a post from a Reddit forum called r/Pets; the post is titled "Struggling After Losing My Dog: Looking for Advice on Coping with Grief," and the comments are from people who share their experiences of loss. We would never say that a search engine understands what it's like to lose a dog, or even that the internet itself understands. Other humans understand what it's like to lose a dog; they have posted about their experiences on the internet, and a search engine offers a way for you to find what they've said (and to potentially interact with them). I would argue that the search-engine experience is not only more transparent than a chatbot about what is happening; it is psychologically healthier for the user. ... Employing philosophers might endow LLM companies with an air of respectability that slot-machine makers don't get from the behavioral psychologists they hire, but in both cases the companies are preying on people's tendency to see something that's not there.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
