© Alex Welsh
The CENTER Awards
The CENTER Awards recognize outstanding images, singular or part of a series, in three categories: Personal, Social and Environmental. A broad and inclusive interpretation of the themes is encouraged.
THE PERSONAL AWARD recognizes work engaging in the exploration and expression of the power of self-representation and/or underrepresented experiences.
THE SOCIALLY ENGAGED AWARD recognizes work addressing social issues. All projects exploring social topics or themes are eligible.
THE ENVIRONMENTAL AWARD recognizes work focusing on the state of the environment. Topics may include, but are not limited to, conservation, biodiversity, ecology, climate change or other issues concerning the natural world. All projects exploring ecological relationships, topics or themes are eligible.
PROJECT ADVANCEMENT PACKAGES
• Group Exhibition at CENTER
• Review Santa Fe participation
• Publication in LENSCRATCH
• Professional Development Seminars access
• Inclusion in the printed Program Guide
• Inclusion in the Online Gallery & Archive
2026 Jurors
PERSONAL AWARD
Marina Chao • Curator, Center for Photography at Woodstock (CPW)
Marina Chao is a curator at CPW in Kingston, New York. She has previously held curatorial positions at the International Center of Photography and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. She organized the exhibition Multiply, Identify, Her (ICP, 2018) and was awarded a 2019 Curatorial Research Fellowship from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for Seeing Meaning: From Pictographs to AI, an interdisciplinary project exploring the intersections of image, language, and technology.
SOCIALLY ENGAGED AWARD
Jeffrey Henson Scales • Photography Editor, The New York Times
Henson Scales is an award-winning New York Times photography editor who has been co-editor of the annual Year in Pictures special section for over a dozen years and he also created and curated the photography column, “Exposures,” which was a photo essay column that ran in the Opinion section from 2011 through. 2023. As a photographer, he is the author of three books of photographs, of which his most recent book, “In A Time of Panthers, The Early Photographs.” is an archive of photographs Mr. Henson Scales made as a teenager in Oakland of the Black Panther Party in the 60s. He also is a professor of photojournalism at New York University.
ENVIRONMENTAL AWARD
Dominique Hildebrand • Climate & Environment Photo Assignment Editor, The Washington Post
Dominique commissions and curates visual narratives that illuminate the pressing environmental challenges of our time. Prior to joining The Post, Dominique was a photo editor at National Geographic, where she led multi-platform projects, including the September 2022 cover feature on America's land conservation strategy. Dominique was named a finalist for Visual Editor of the year by POYi in 2025, and she was a part of the team nominated as a finalist for the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting.
Debmalya Ray Choudhuri • A Factless Autobiography
“A Factless Autobiography is inspired by a chapter of the same name in the Book of Disquiet by the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa. It is an intimate and personal exploration of loss, desire, and the fragile nature of our existence. I started this project in response to the death of a lover and my confrontation with tuberculosis as a young adult. It grapples with the complex and often conflicting emotions of grief, melancholia, and survival while also questioning the nature of gender, identity, and the human condition. This work is a fragmented narrative of lived experience, longing, and healing.”
2025 Personal Award Recipient
Haruka Sakaguchi • The Camps America Built
“Following the Pearl Harbor attacks on December 7, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order authorizing the forced removal and incarceration of 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry—two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens—into concentration camps. Entire families were uprooted from their homes and sent to hastily constructed detention centers, some as crude as horse stalls, before being imprisoned in remote concentration camps for up to four years. The trauma of displacement, incarceration, and family separation continues to shape lives today.”
2025 Socially Engaged Award Recipient
Alex Welsh • Salton Sea
“As drought fueled by climate change batters the American West, evaporation and a decreased in flow of agricultural runoff from surrounding farms are causing California’s Salton Sea to shrink. Today, the state’s largest and most polluted lake teeters on the brink of ecological collapse. Residents living in its vicinity face the threat of toxic dust. As the soil dries and the winds stir, the lake’s parched shores emit hazardous dust laced with arsenic, selenium and pesticides—remnants of a century's worth of agricultural runoff. Respiratory illness in the area is already widespread and each year more children are admitted to emergency rooms in Imperial County for asthma-related cases than anywhere else in the state. The lake’s future now stands at a precipice: protracted drought and reductions in inflow from the overextended Colorado River threaten to accelerate the beleaguered lake’s decline. If the shoreline continues to recede, an estimated 100 tons of lung-damaging dust could blow off its shores daily by 2045.”
2025 Environmental Award Recipient
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