usk reportage grant program
UPDATE FROM RITA SABLER EDUCATION DIRECTOR:
WINNERS OF THE USK REPORTAGE GRANT PROGRAM This program was open to individual sketchers, chapters, and creative collaborators from around the world. Visual storytelling is at the heart of the USk movement, and we hope the program inspires new artist-reporters in our community. In December 2021, we received 63 proposals from sketchers all over the world. A committee of six judges awarded $USD 300-500 to the following winners: • ‘The Shifting Landscapes of Despair, Hope, Survival and Persistence’, Seattle (USA) by Daniel Winterbottom • ‘The Room’, Paris (France) by Mathieu Letellier (aka. Mat Let) • ‘Chawls of Mumbai: The Social Network’, Mumbai (India) by USK Mumbai • ‘Ripple Effect of a Historic Market’, Pune (India) by Farah Irani • ‘Night People Street Portraits, Berlin Kantstraße’, Berlin (Germany) by Rolf Schröter Congratulations to all the winners – as well as those who submitted other wonderful sketches!
SHIFTING LANDSCAPES – Daniel Winterbottom
I
s it a right, a privilege, a reward, or a necessity to have a safe, dry home? Homelessness has become interwoven with the Seattle streetscape; over 11,000 people are experiencing this destabilising way of life, and thousands of businesses have closed in the wake of COVID-19. For those few, like Daniel Winterbottom, who do not walk by with eyes fixed on some other place, there are stories to be heard, heartbreak to be witnessed or imagined, and myriad unexpected details that jolt our perceptions and prejudices – like people’s efforts to keep their campsites clean without running water or storage materials, some placing bouquets of wildflowers placed at their entrances to make them more homely.
10 drawing attention
Daniel says his year-long project began “as an unintentional act of art therapy – a response to the pandemic’s containment and alienation”. He felt it was important to learn about homelessness from the people impacted by it, and to provide “evidence that it is real, and that we as a society have, in part, turning away allowed it to happen”. One silver lining was that he found a renewed passion for sketching “as an act of observation, documentation, and expression”. Each sketch of a dwelling, shelter, or abandoned piece of furniture is so detailed and sensitive that it makes us wonder about the individuals and families linked to it. The sketches seem to ask us to see the human impact, the wasted potential, and the obligation to do more than just turn away.
