Reinforcements. Qiana Mestrich. winner of the 2025 Saltzman Prize – CPW, New York – Usa

These collages emerged from my larger project, @workingwoc “Towards a History of Women of Color in the Workplace”, an independent, multimedia archive that visualizes the labor history of Black and immigrant women of color in America’s workplace. I began this archive as part of my research for the 2022 Magnum Foundation Counter Historíes program and grant.

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, is forthcoming from Routledge later this month.

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.

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.

Founded in 1977 as the Center for Photography at Woodstock, CPW is a not-for-profit arts organization with a dual mission: to support artists working in photography and related media, and to engage audiences through creation, discovery, and learning. At the heart of CPW’s mission is programming that is community-based, artist-centered, and collaborative. To foster public conversation around critical issues in photography, CPW offers exhibitions, workshops, artists’ residencies, and access to its Digital Media Lab workspaces. In 2022, CPW relocated from Woodstock to Kingston, NY. Now open: CPW’s newly renovated headquarters – including a photography museum, and an educational and community center– in a 40,000-square-foot factory building at 25 Dederick Street.