2026 Lucie Scholarship Program

The Lucie Foundation is proud to support professional and emerging talent with vision and dynamic ideas that challenge and progress the art form of still photography into work that compels. Our support of photography is broad, from Fine Art to Documentary and Photojournalism, to digital and film-based works. Our concern is to support photographers producing work that is at once gripping, and original.

The Lucie Foundation is pleased to offer four cash grants and a variety of prizes to support the work of emerging and established photographers.

Winners will be part of a group exhibition. This exhibition will then travel to the House of Lucie Galleries worldwide, including Los Angeles, Athens, Budapest, Ostuni, and Samui.

SUBMIT

Deadline: September 30th

Early Bird Discount:
20% off until April 23rd
10% off until April 30th

MEET THE JURY

Antares Wells

Assistant Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia

Antares Wells is a curator and writer with a specialisation in photography. Her curatorial projects, writing and research span the early history of photography through to contemporary practice. She is Assistant Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. Previously, she was Curator at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, and Curatorial Assistant in the Department of Photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Antares has written and spoken widely on art history and photography, including at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles; 10×10 Photobooks, New York; and Concordia University, Montréal.

Kateryna Radchenko

Curator, artists, photography researcher. Based in Ukraine.

Since 2015 – founder and director of the International Festival Odesa Photo Days.

2025 – Fellow of Magnum Foundation’s Counter Histories Program

2024-2025 – invited curator Beyond the Silence project, organized by MAGNUM Photos.

2023 – World Press Photo Contest jury member (Chair of Europe region)

Curated exhibitions in Ukraine, South Korea, Sweden, Georgia, France, Canada, Latvia, Poland, The Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Italy, Hungary and the UK.

As an author, she has published articles in several international magazines and online platforms, such as Fotograf, Magenta, EIKON, British Journal of Photography, FOAM Magazine, Over, TRIGGER etc. In collaboration with the Finnish Museum of Photography wrote the book Images Tells Stories. In 2022 together with Christopher Nunn and Donald Weber published three volumes of The Information Front.

Photo Credits: @Valentyn Kuzan

Elizabeth Ferrer

Curator and writer, and a leading specialist on the history of Latinx photography.

Elizabeth Ferrer is a New York based curator and writer, and a leading specialist on the history of Latinx photography. Ferrer was Chief Curator and Vice President at BRIC, a leading cultural organization in Brooklyn, from 2007-2022. As an independent curator, she has presented exhibitions at such institutions as Aperture; the Smithsonian Institution; En Foco, El Museo del Barrio; the Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University, and the Americas Society, as well as at museums across the United States. She is the author of the 2020 Latinx Photography in the United States: A Visual History, the first comprehensive study of the field. More recently, her exhibition on the pioneering Chicano photographer Louis Carlos Bernal was presented at the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona. The New York Times named her book accompanying this exhibition as a 2024 best art book of the year. Ferrer also curated Chicano Camera Culture: A Photographic History, 1966-2026, which opened at The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture in February of this year.

RULES & REQUIREMENTS

WHO CAN APPLY:

The Lucie Scholarships are open to professional and emerging photographers 18 years and older, worldwide. We define “professional” as any photographer who earns the majority of their income from photography. We define “emerging” as any photographer enrolled as a student, in the first five years of their photography career, or does not earn the majority of their income from photography.

WHAT IS REQUIRED TO APPLY:

Please read the following information carefully to make sure your application material is complete.
Incomplete applications will not be considered:

Project Proposal (1,500 characters max). This proposal should include the following:
- Project Start and End Dates
- Description of your project
- Your Plan for completing the project (i.e. how you intend to approach the project and how you intend to use the scholarship money)
- Five Goals that you plan to accomplish while working on the project (e.g. producing 20 new images, making 5 prints, etc.)
A one-page biography and/or CV
Twenty digital images

USE & OWNERSHIP:

The photographer must be the sole author and owner of the copyright of photos entered in to the competition. Copyright and all other rights remain that of the photographer. Any photograph used by Lucie Foundation shall carry the photographer’s credit line.

FAQ

Is there a limit to the number of scholarship applications per artist?

No, you may submit as many applications as you would like.

Can I submit the same project to the two different scholarships?

Yes, you may submit the same project to the two different scholarship categories if you feel the work would lend itself to either category.

Is there a submission fee?

Yes, the submission fee’s are:
• Professional category, $25 /submission
• Emerging category, $15 / submission

What images should I submit?

Please upload 20 digital images from the existing project that you are proposing to continue.
If you have not yet started your proposed project, upload 20 digital images from a previous cohesive project and make a note of this in your proposal.
If you have some finished images but not a full 20, please supplement with images from a previous cohesive project and make a note of this in your proposal.

How should I prepare my files?

Please prepare your files according to the specifications below. JPG only. (NO TIF, GIF, PNG, PDF files will be accepted.)
72 DPI No file should exceed 4mb

Can I send print materials, books or CD’s?

No, Lucie Foundation accepts online submissions only.

When will the shortlist and recipients be announced?

Finalists and Winners will be announced in October 2026, exact date TBD.

Can multiple photographers submit a project together?

If you both are actively photographing the project submitted together, yes you can. Prize earnings and prizes will be split between you both. Please put one name in first name section, and one name in last name section when submitting, and make note of it being a multi photographer project in the proposal.

How will I know if I was selected?

If you were selected for the shortlist or as a recipient, you will be contacted directly through the email which you provided in the submission form. The shortlist and recipients will also be announced via the Lucie Foundation newsletter, website, and social media.

For any questions, please contact us at team@luciefoundation.org

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2026 Lucie Scholarship Program

CATEGORIES

$3,000 FINE ART SCHOLARSHIP

$1,000 FINE ART SCHOLARSHIP

$3,000 PHOTOJOURNALISM/DOCUMENTARY SCHOLARSHIP

$1,000 PHOTOJOURNALISM/DOCUMENTARY SCHOLARSHIP