CPW is pleased to announce that Qiana Mestrich is the winner of the 2025 Saltzman Prize. The Saltzman Prize recognizes the extraordinary achievements of an emerging photographer whose recent work has garnered wider visibility and whose distinctive voice contributes fresh perspectives to the ongoing dialogue surrounding photography and visual culture. Qiana Mestrich will receive a $10,000 award, the 2025 CPW Vision Award for Emerging Photographer, and a solo exhibition of her work at CPW in 2026.
Qiana Mestrich is an interdisciplinary artist, photo historian, and writer based in the Hudson Valley. Her autobiographical artwork and research engages issues around Black and mixed-race identity, motherhood/mothering, and women’s corporate labor. In 2007, she founded the blog Dodge & Burn: Decolonizing Photography History, an arts initiative that advocates for photographers of color. Mestrich’s book based on this blog, Decolonization and Diversity in Contemporary Photography: The Dodge & Burn Interviews, was published by Routledge in March, 2025.
“Receiving the Saltzman Prize, especially after over a decade dedicated to photography-based art, is a deeply moving honor,” Mestrich said. “To have my work recognized by such a distinguished jury is truly humbling. As a New York-based artist, CPW has become an invaluable pillar of support, fostering the growth of my personal work and various projects. I’m profoundly grateful to be woven into the enduring legacy of this remarkable art institution.”
The Saltzman Prize’s nine other shortlisted artists are: Rapheal Begay, Window Rock, Arizona; Samantha Box, Bronx, New York; Harlan Bozeman, Little Rock, Arkansas; Lucia Gorostegui, Madrid, Spain; Margot Kalach, Mexico City, Mexico; Dakota Mace, Madison, Wisconsin; Rene Matić, London, UK; Lindsay Perryman, Brooklyn, NY; and Donavon Smallwood, New York, New York.Lindsay Perryman, Brooklyn, New York; and Donavon Smallwood, New York, New York.
These shortlist candidates were nominated by a team composed of Marvin Heiferman, curator and writer; Candice Hopkins, Executive Director of Forge Project; Tyler Mitchell, photographer; Elena Navarro, Director of Espacio V; Sasha Wolf, Executive Director of the PhotoWork Foundation. From their ten nominations, the final selection was made by a jury that included Dawoud Bey, photographer; Lucy Sante, writer; and Stephen Shore, photographer.
As winner of the 2025 Saltzman Prize, Qiana Mestrich will receive the 2025 CPW Vision Award for Emerging Photographer, to be presented at the 2025 CPW Vision Awards in Kingston, NY, on May 10, 2025.
The Saltzman Prize was created in 2024 by CPW Trustee Lisa Saltzman, in collaboration with CPW, to honor emerging photographers and to pay tribute to her parents Ralph and Muriel Saltzman, passionate collectors and devoted arts patrons. Keisha Scarville was the inaugural recipient, recognized for her powerful exploration of belonging and place. Scarville’s exhibition Recess is currently on view at CPW through May 24, 2025.
“I established The Saltzman Prize to support and give opportunity to emerging artists,” said Lisa Saltzman. “The nominees are well deserving of this prize, they are really talented and the calibre of nominators and judges speaks to the merit of the prize. My partnership with CPW is fruitful and it is great that I can further CPW’s important mission. The impact of the prize is clear. My parents’ influence has led me to do what I do and I am forever grateful to them.”
“We are absolutely thrilled to honor Qiana Mestrich with this distinguished award, and we thank the jury for their wise selection. In her visual work, Qiana creates highly innovative collages that cleverly highlight neglected histories of women’s labor, racism, and mothering,” said Brian Wallis, executive director of CPW. “At the same time, we are deeply grateful to our esteemed trustee Lisa Saltzman for her vision and generosity in establishing the Saltzman Prize, which continues to shine a light on extraordinary emerging photographers. This award not only celebrates artistic excellence but also provides crucial support to voices that push the boundaries of photography and visual storytelling.”
2025 Saltzman Prize Shortlist
Rapheal Begay (Diné) is an artist based in Tségháhoodzání (Window Rock, Arizona). His work uses cultural landscape photography and creative collaboration to celebrate and preserve the Diné way of life. Visual sovereignty, Indigenous storytelling traditions, and land-based knowledge inform his research and practice. Recent projects include ALL REZ: Kéyah, Hooghan, K’é, Iiná | Land, Home, Kinship, Life, the first traveling site-specific photography exhibition across the Navajo Nation. He holds a BFA in Photography with a minor in Arts Management and a Certificate in Museum Studies from the University of New Mexico.
Samantha Box is a Jamaican-born, Bronx-based photographer whose work has been recently showcased in exhibitions at the National Museum of Women in the Arts (DC), Le Rencontres d’Arles, and the Bronx Museum of Arts among other places. Her awards include a NYFA/NYSCA Fellowship in Photography (2010 and 2022). In 2023, she was shortlisted for the Aperture Portfolio Prize and the Louis Roederer Discovery Award among others. Box was nominated for the Foam Paul Huf Award in 2024. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Fine Art Houston and the Harvard Art Museum.
Harlan Bozeman is a photographer, artist, and educator whose research-driven practice has focused on confronting the erasure of Black culture and its histories, and the legacies of slavery and its aftermath in the American South. His previous work explored the Gullah Sea Islands communities, specifically Wadmalaw Island where his family is from. He has been featured in The Atlantic and The New York Times. A Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Bozeman holds an MFA from the University of Arkansas and a BA from DePaul University.
Lucía Gorostegui is a photographer and visual artist who approaches her practice from her studies in physics, as a metaphor for the construction of individual and collective reality. She is particularly interested in the object-like condition of photography beyond the image itself. Her project Las Veces won the Casal Solleric Open Call for Projects 2024. She collaborates with institutions such as the CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva), and private entities like Acciona. Gorostegui combines her artistic activity with commissions for architectural studios and teaching, living and working between Mallorca and Madrid.
Margot Kalach seeks the limits of the photographic medium through camara-less experiments and through recycling photographic waste to oxidize paper. She reflects on ideas of evolution from simple to complex forms and on intimate technologies to push the subject to the center of scientific structures. Kalach has exhibited her work at Reverberations (Cordoba Lab, Oaxaca, 2022), PhotoLondon 2023 (London, UK) and MACOfoto 2025 (Mexico). She is a co-founder of CROMA, an artist run space in Mexico city dedicated to contemporary art exhibitions, where her studio/darkroom resides.
Dakota Mace (Diné) is an interdisciplinary artist whose work draws from the history of her Diné heritage, exploring the themes of family lineage, community, and identity. In addition, her work pushes the viewer’s understanding of Diné culture through alternative photography techniques, weaving, beadwork, and papermaking. Her work is in the collections of the Library of Congress, Forge Project Collection, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among other places. She is represented by Bruce Silverstein Gallery in New York City.
Rene Matić is an artist and writer whose practice spans photography, film, and sculpture. They delve into the complex relationship between West Indian and white working-class culture in Britain, while privileging queer/ing intimacies, partnerships and pleasure as modes of survival. Their work converges in a meeting place they describe as “rude(ness)”–an evidencing and honoring of the in-between. Matić has exhibited their work at such places as Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, New York and Tate Britain, London, UK. Their work was included in the Coventry Biennial 2023. They live and work in London, UK.
Lindsay Perryman is a multifaceted artist from Brooklyn, NY, whose work explores the existence and visibility of transgender identities. Perryman utilizes their practice to challenge and rewrite misconceptions about the spectrum of identity. The backdrop of their hometown serves as a significant influence, grounding their practice in a personal yet universal context. Perryman’s work has been showcased in the Brooklyn Museum and MoCADA. Notable achievements include first place in the 2024 Palm Photo Prize and being nominated for CULTURED 2024 Young Photographers List. Their work is in the permanent collection of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art.
Donavon Smallwood’s practice consists of finding ways to photograph what many observe as the details of life: subtle gestures, small mystifications, loose ends, and budding change. Never indifferent, always with love, Smallwood attempts to photograph as a witness to the beauty and ephemerality of the ordinary and everyday. Smallwood’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, most recently at Foam and Galerie Wouter van Leeuwen, and are in a handful of collections, including the Rijksmuseum. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2021 Aperture Portfolio Prize. Languor was his first monograph (Trespasser, 2021).
