Check out these powerful images from the winners of the 2022 Leica Women Foto Project
Meet the talented female photographers honored with Leica’s third annual photo award.
![A portrait of a women from Lebanon in a field of flowers](https://www.popphoto.com/uploads/2022/03/08/09_RaniaMatar-Samira-Beirut-Lebanon-2021-.jpg?auto=webp&width=1440&height=1152)
Leica Camera has announced the three winners of its third annual photo award series, the Leica Women’s Foto Project. Rania Matar, Rosem Morton, and September Bottoms will all receive a Leica SL2-S camera, $10,000, and have their work shown at an exhibition at the Fotografiska New York museum.
The awards program was developed by Leica to elevate the perspectives of female photographers in a career that remains heavily male-dominated. Here’s what you should know about the work that the three winners will have on view at Fotografiska New York.
Rania Matar
![A portrait of a women from Lebanon in amongst shattered windows.](https://www.popphoto.com/uploads/2022/03/08/06_RaniaMatar-Demi-Brummana-Lebanon-2021-.jpg?auto=webp&optimize=high&width=100)
Related: The 30 emerging photographers to watch in 2022
Lebanese photographer Rania Matar traveled back to Lebanon to produce her award-winning project Where Do I Go? The project explores issues of personal and collective identity from female adolescence into adulthood in a country with an ongoing financial crisis that was ill-prepared to deal with COVID-19. The celebrated photographer was also a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow.
![A portrait of a women from Lebanon laying on the floor int he sun.](https://www.popphoto.com/uploads/2022/03/08/07_RaniaMatar-Yasmina-Forn-Shubbak-Beirut-Lebanon-2021.jpg?auto=webp&optimize=high&width=100)
Rosem Morton
![Monochrome image by Rosem Morton](https://www.popphoto.com/uploads/2022/03/08/Wildflower_RM_9.jpg?auto=webp&optimize=high&width=100)
Rosem Morton spent a decade working as a nurse before diving into a career in photojournalism. In addition to the Leica Women Foto Project award, she’s won multiple grants from National Geographic for her work covering rape survivors. Her project Wildflower is a deeply intimate look that finds Morton turning the camera on herself to document her own experience after being sexually assaulted.
![Monochrome image by Rosem Morton](https://www.popphoto.com/uploads/2022/03/08/Wildflower_RM_10.jpg?auto=webp&optimize=high&width=100)
September Bottoms
![A women jumping off a diving board.](https://www.popphoto.com/uploads/2022/03/08/Bottoms-September-31-Kat-jumps-off-the-diving-board-after-getting-out-of-her-first-psychiatric-hold-one-of-many-more-to-come-scaled.jpg?auto=webp&optimize=high&width=100)
New York Times Photography Fellow, September Bottoms’ project Remember September is a visual memoir focused on the photographer’s Oklahoma-based family that explores the effects of intergenerational trauma born out of sexual trauma and poverty. The work is extremely beautiful, but also grotesquely subjective—occupying a striking visual space.
![A family as the dinner table.](https://www.popphoto.com/uploads/2022/03/08/leica-51-CAPTION-The-whole-family-gathers-for-the-first-time-in-over-ten-years-scaled.jpg?auto=webp&optimize=high&width=100)
New VIII mentor program
In addition to the Leica Women Foto Project winners, Leica also announced three female photographers who were selected to take part in a new mentor program that will be run in collaboration with VII Agency. The three mentees are Brooklyn Kascel, Jackie Malloy, and Natalia Neuhaus. These three photographers will receive a year-long mentorship, VII Agency representation, a Leica Gallery exhibition, and a 12-month loan of a Leica Q2 camera.