Silver Eye

The Fellowship 26 International Award recognizes rising talents or established photographers from anywhere in the world. This year’s Fellowship International Award recipient is Jamie Ho, with honorable mentions awarded to Conner Gordon and Jacquelyn Johnson.

The Fellowship 26 Keystone Award recognizes outstanding artists living or creating work within the state of Pennsylvania. This year’s Keystone Award recipient is Javier Griffey, with honorable mentions awarded to Robert Contreras II and Helen Jones.

All six artists will show their work in the Fellowship 26 exhibition in May of 2026. Stay connected to Silver Eye to keep up to date with more news about Fellowship 26 later this Spring!

This year we had almost 200 applicants for Fellowship 26 from around the world reflecting innovative voices in photography and unique lived experiences and perspectives. Our sincere thanks to this year's jurors Melissa Catanese, Anthony Francis,and Jessica Johnston, and everyone who submitted to Fellowship.

Image credit: Jamie Ho, Pantyhose with Nail Guards, 2021

Fellowship 26 Award Winners

Fellowship International Award Jamie Ho

Keystone Award Javier Griffey

Fellowship International Award Honorable Mentions Conner Gordon, Jacquelyn Johnson

Keystone Award Honorable Mentions Robert Contreras II, Helen Jones

Participating Artists

Robert Contreras II is a no sabo kid uncovering what lies beneath while planting a future rooted in the love and labor of his Ecuadorian and Mexican American family. Once taught to blend in, he now reclaims his identity through performances and photographs that examine memory, belonging, and legacy. His work turns cultural gaps into spaces of connection; an ongoing journey to honor the past, grow through the present, and tend to what’s yet to come.

Conner Gordon is a Kansas-based photographer exploring photography as unreliable narration. He is currently a lecturer in photography at Washburn University.

Javier Griffey is a photographic essayist whose practice interrogates photography as a meditation on fragmented truths, shared memory, and the ethics of seeing. Drawing from personal archives, documentary methodologies, and his own emotional cadence, Griffey approaches the medium as both document and metaphor. His images, texts, and material interventions dance in tandem, seeking validation in the use of a camera. He holds an MFA from the School of the Arts at Columbia University and a BA from Moravian University.

Jamie Ho is an interdisciplinary artist and educator from Fort Myers, Florida. Her art practice engages with photography, GIFs, new media, and installation to investigate the long-term impact of assimilation and cultural bereavement through references to ancestral Chinese traditions and artifacts. Her work troubles the history of public spectacle and display of Asian American women, using performance and lighting studio to challenge societal expectations of gender roles and performance. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Art in the Photography and Moving Image area at Florida State University.

Jacquelyn Johnson is a project-based artist working interdisciplinarily between photography, time-based media, textiles, and prose. She currently lives in Ithaca, New York where she works as a program coordinator and is an MFA candidate in Image Text at Cornell University. She is bound to art and writing through vernacular language, failures in storytelling and representation, and daily practices. Johnson is from Western Pennsylvania, and is a co-director of the Pittsburgh Art Book Fair, and self-publishes under the moniker Cool Dry Place. She received her B.F.A. from Carnegie Mellon University School of Art.

Helen Jones is an image maker whose work explores interactions between people and places, and the imprints they leave behind. She holds an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin and a BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art. Since 2011, she has run Pine Island Press, a small press specializing in publishing photography and art zines.