March 9, 2010

The San Francisco Foundation Awards $110,000 to Bay Area Documentary Fund and John Gutmann Photography Fellowship Recipients

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – (Tuesday, March 9, 2010) – The San Francisco Foundation announced today the winners of two award programs designed for individual artists, the Bay Area Documentary Fund and the John Gutmann Photography Fellowship. Five Bay Area filmmakers each received a $20,000 award and a San Francisco photographer received a $10,000 award.

"The Foundation is committed to supporting the development of new artistic work in our community," says John Killacky, Arts and Culture Program Officer at The San Francisco Foundation. "The array of talent in the applicant pool was extraordinary and our Board was thrilled to support such a range of artistic expression. Documentary films are instrumental in public education for Bay Area issues and concerns, and photography continues to capture the spirit and creativity of our community."

Bay Area Documentary Fund
The Bay Area Documentary Fund is an innovative program designed to support accredited Bay Area documentary filmmakers who are exploring issues that have been historically underexposed, misinterpreted, or ignored, and that are pertinent to the five Bay Area counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, and San Mateo. Aligned with The San Francisco Foundation’s programmatic priorities, the five awardees were chosen out of a pool of 37 applications to receive $20,000 toward completing their documentary films.

The Bay Area Documentary Fund is a project of the Fund for Artists, a collaborative partnership with the East Bay Community Foundation. Funds are comprised of donations from individual donors and grants from the Irvine Foundation and the Hewlett Foundation.

The 2009 Bay Area Documentary Fund awardees: 

Eugene Corr   
To fund travel and production for "From Ghost Town to Havana," a feature-length documentary following the lives of six boys as they travel from West Oakland to Havana, Cuba, to play baseball with six Centro Habana boys.

Megan Gelstein   
To fund production for "Green Shall Overcome," a feature-length documentary about Van Jones and the green collar economy.

Peter Nicks   
To fund early production of "The Waiting Room," a feature-length documentary film revealing how the healthcare crisis affects those most at risk during this unique time and how the physical waiting room is a symbol of their plight.

Tamara Perkins   
To support production and post-production for "The Trust," a documentary that explores how and why children follow their families into generational cycles of poverty and recidivism.

Ken Paul Rosenthal   
To fund early stages of production for "Crooked Beauty," an experimental documentary on mental illness.

John Gutmann Photography Fellowship
The distinguished John Gutmann Photography Fellowship, established by photographer John Gutmann (1905-1998), is an annual award given to an emerging artist who exhibits professional accomplishment, serious artistic commitment, and need in the field of creative photography. Photographers are nominated by a distinguished group of professionals in the photography field. The award is then adjudicated by a separate group of eminent photographers and photography curators.

This year’s award is given in honor and memory of photographer and trust-designated juror Larry Sultan who passed away on December 13, 2009. Selected from a pool of 21 photographers, the $10,000 award went to San Francisco photographer Sean McFarland, a student of Sultan’s at the California College of the Arts, to support the development of his creative work.

Sean McFarland
Sean McFarland is an American-born artist and educator who lives and works in San Francisco. His images explore the relationships between the process of image-making, artifice, photographic truth, and the representation of landscape. He is interested in making pictures of the ways in which humans have altered and transformed the natural environment, and in doing so, making pictures of the human footprint on the natural world. His work has been included in shows at the San Jose Museum of Art, the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Headlands Center for the Arts. He is a recipient of the 2004 fellowship to the National Photography Institute at Columbia University, the 2005 Phelan Award in Photography, a 2009 fellowship and residency at the Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, and the 2009 Baum Award for Emerging American Photographers. His work is in collections at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Humboldt State University, and the University of California at Davis. He earned a BS at Humboldt State University in 2002 and an MFA from the California College of the Arts in 2004.

Scott McFarland, “Sea,” 2008, Polaroid

About The San Francisco Foundation
The San Francisco Foundation (TSFF) is the community foundation serving the Bay Area since 1948, granting more than $800 million over the past ten years. Through the generosity and vision of our donors, TSFF awarded grants totaling more than $80.6 million in fiscal year 2009. Bringing together donors and building on community assets through grantmaking, leveraging, public policy, advocacy, and leadership development, TSFF addresses community needs in the areas of community health, education, arts and culture, community development, and the environment. The San Francisco Foundation is a community foundation serving San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, and San Mateo Counties.