The Vital Impacts Environmental Photography Fellowships and Mentorships support visual storytellers undertaking long-term documentary photography projects that explore environmental and conservation challenges and, importantly, the people and communities working toward solutions.

The program has a dual purpose: to provide financial support and mentorship to photographers developing significant bodies of work while fostering meaningful collaboration with communities and organizations engaged in environmental and wildlife conservation. We are particularly interested in stories that move beyond documenting environmental problems to illuminate the people, communities, and initiatives working toward meaningful solutions.

Each fellowship supports one photographer and one documentary project over the fellowship and mentorship period, providing the time, financial support, mentorship, and creative independence needed to develop a compelling and deeply reported body of work. Fellows will receive ongoing guidance from the Vital Impacts mentorship community throughout the year.

At the conclusion of the fellowship or mentorship, recipients will be expected to have made meaningful progress on their proposed project and developed a substantial body of work suitable for publication, exhibition, and other forms of public engagement.

A New Exhibition Opportunity with the Festival of Ethical Photography:

Vital Impacts has collaborated with the Festival of Ethical Photography for the past five years, and we are delighted to expand this relationship through a new partnership that will create an exceptional opportunity for one of our seven Fellowship recipients.

One Fellowship recipient, selected at a later date, will be invited to exhibit their work at the 2027 Festival of Ethical Photography in Lodi, Italy. For 17 years, the Festival has presented powerful documentary photography and photojournalism by internationally acclaimed photographers, providing a prominent international platform for work engaging with urgent social and environmental issues.

The Festival will cover the full costs of producing and installing the exhibition, as well as the selected photographer’s international travel and accommodation to attend the Festival and present their work in person.

This partnership gives a Vital Impacts Fellow the opportunity to share their work with an international audience, exhibit at one of Italy’s leading documentary photography festivals, and connect directly with photographers, editors, conservationists, and an engaged public.