PHOTO FARM Announces Inaugural 2026 Artistic Research Award Winner

Chapel Hill, NC
MARCH 2026

PHOTO FARM is pleased to announce that the artist and independent curator Liza Faktor has been selected as the recipient of the Inaugural PHOTO FARM Artistic Research Award.

Established in 2026, the PHOTO FARM Artistic Research Award, operates by nomination only and celebrates artistic excellence while advancing PHOTO FARM’s dedication to the intersection of arts and ecology. Ms. Faktor’s ongoing curatorial inquiry, Roots, delves into the traumas, memory, and resilience of the forest ecosystems—in the context of climate emergency, violence against humans and nonhumans, survival and healing. The project addresses our forced separation from the entanglement with the natural world, our role as visitors, witnesses and participants in the fate of the environment, and our path to healing through unity with all living beings. Her curatorial project is closely connected to her own artistic practice and her recently completed project After Us, exploring similar issues.

Ms. Faktor’s project emerged as the clear winner from a competitive field of nominees put forward by a network of experts—curators, artists, and art institutions leaders—with a proposal that thoughtfully engages with environmental crises and our community. The jury [below] based their decision on three critical criteria: innovative curatorial approach, collaborative methodology, and the project's urgent cultural relevance. Members of the jury observed that "the project is not only timely but essential in confronting our ecological crisis through visual storytelling. At a time when forests and all the species who inhabit them face extraordinary natural and human disturbances worldwide, Roots invites various stakeholders in forested and deforested landscapes—environmental advocates, scientists, Indigenous culture bearers and local communities—to participate in multifaceted dialogue about the fate of these landscapes, and by consequence, us humans. The project offers a profound meditation on humanity's relationship with the forest at a critical moment when such dialogue between art and ecology is urgently needed. Ms. Faktor's curatorial vision creates a space where art can function as both witness and healer.”

The jury:

•   Anna Eve Evtiugina, Curator and Art advisor, Co-founder ipureland.art, New York
•   Phyllis B. Dooney, Founder | Director, PHOTO FARM, Chapel Hill
•   Thomas Dworzak, Photographer, Magnum Photos, Paris
•   James Wellford, Senior Visual Editor, National Geographic Society, Independent curator, New York
•   Anna Van Lenten, Founder and Curator, LightField, New York

The award acknowledges artistic research excellence and will support further research in collaboration with our Photo Farm community. Ms. Faktor’s involvement includes a selection of international and local artists along with a working assessment of PHOTO FARM’s ecology as an agri-tourist makers space and will be fully realized in an on-site collaboration with us in Spring of 2027.