Visual Storytellers Fund

 

The Visual Storytellers Fund supports documentary photographers who use their cameras to tell stories that matter.

​

Through grants, exhibitions, publications, and creative collaborations, we support photographers exploring the social, humanitarian, cultural, and environmental issues shaping our world. Funded by individual donors who believe in the power of documentary photography, our mission is not simply to help important work get made, but to make sure it is seen, shared, remembered and acted on.

 

We are building a global community of visual storytellers, giving photographers the resources, visibility, and platforms they need to reach audiences far beyond the traditional photography world.

 

When the Earth Speaks, Are You Listening?

 

In 2026, the Visual Storytellers Fund expanded that mission through a collaboration with the Yale School of Music, under the banner "When the Earth Speaks, Are You Listening?"

 

The project brings together two powerful forms of storytelling - photography and music - to confront one of the defining issues of our time: climate change.

 

Original compositions created by composers from the Yale School of Music are performed live alongside a cinematic journey through extraordinary photographs by BarTur Photo Award winning photographers from 86 countries. Music and images become a single experience, telling stories of a changing planet and of the people and communities living through that change.

 

It represents a new direction for the Visual Storytellers Fund: creating opportunities for documentary photography to move beyond the page and the gallery and become part of larger cultural conversations.

 

The images ask us to look.

 

The music asks us to listen.

 

Together, they ask us to act.