Nigerian, Taiwo Aina alongside five others won the 2024 Women Photograph Project Grant.
This grant awards five women $5,000 grant under the Women Photograph Grants, and a $10, 000 grant to the overall winner via The Women + Leica Grant.
Aina alongside fellow photographers, Venezuelan, Andrea Hernandez Briceno; Ukrainian, Oksana Parafeniuk; Niagaran Natalia Neuhas, Colombian, Viviana Peretti, and Gabo Caruso (Argentina + Spain).
Aina’s work Game of Confidence documents the lives of six female boxers in Lagos, Nigeria. In one of the largest cities in the world, these athletes all have different reasons to pursue this sport: Esther Oni mentioned that she gets in the to develop her self-confidence; Olamide wants to be a superstar; Eniola to make an extra income; and Damilola to burn calories. Exploring themes like gender equality and women’s empowerment, Aina’s goal is to showcase the beauty and importance of this sport, how its impacting the individual lives of these women, and show the struggles of what it takes to be a professional boxer in a big city like Lagos.
Meantime, Parafeniuk’s photographs is telling the stories of Ukrainian women in the Ukraine -Russian war, exploring the changes in their roles and lives from familiar roles of victims, caregivers, mourning wives and mothers to joining the military, taking on new jobs, working as surgeons and volunteers.
Briceno’s images Hold My Hands explores how sexual and reproductive rights are an unseen aspect of the biggest displacement crisis in the region. Neuhaus explores how in the past 40 years Niagara Falls is facing side health effects of the atomic bomb resulting from refined uranium used in building the bomb which was used by families to furnish their homes. Peretti’s Searching For Lost Lives is a decade-long project about forced disappearance in Colombia; while Caruso’s Cora documents the transitioning of five year old Cora, now 13, as Spain’s youngest trans person.
