Maine Media Workshops + College Announces Jon Henry as Recipient of 2020 Arnold Newman Prize, One of the Nation's Largest in the World of Photographic Portraiture

ROCKPORT, Maine, Sept. 29, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The Arnold Newman Prize for New Directions in Photographic Portraiture is a $20,000 prize awarded annually by Maine Media Workshops + College to a photographer whose work demonstrates a compelling new vision.

Henry's award-winning work entitled Stranger Fruit was created in response to the senseless murders of black men across the nation by police violence. According to his artist statement, "Even with smart phones and dash cams recording the actions, more lives get cut short due to unnecessary and excessive violence." 

Jon Henry is a NYC based visual artist who works with photography and text. Henry in known internationally for infusing cultural activism in his work. He was recently named one of LensCulture's Emerging Artists for 2019, an En Foco Fellow for 2020 and he has also won the Film Photo Prize for Continuing Film Project sponsored by Kodak.

In this award-winning series, Henry photographs mothers with their sons in their environment, reenacting what it must feel like to endure this pain. "The mothers in the photographs have not lost their sons, but understand the reality that this could happen to their family," Henry explains. "The mother is also photographed in isolation, reflecting on the absence. When the trials are over, the protesters have gone home and the news cameras gone, it is the mother left. Left to mourn, to survive." The title of the project is a reference to the song "Strange Fruit." Instead of black bodies hanging from the Poplar Tree, "these fruits of our families, our communities, are being killed in the street."

For more information or to schedule an interview, please contact Raffi DerSimonian: 207.756.0916 or [email protected].

About Maine Media: Founded in 1973 as a summer school for photographers, Maine Media Workshops + College is now a not-for-profit degree granting institution offering more than 400 workshops, certificate programs, and master classes in the fields of photography, film, media art, printmaking, creative writing, and book arts, and serves nearly 2,000 national and international students annually online and on a 20 acre campus in Rockport, Maine.

SOURCE Maine Media Workshops + College