RICHMOND, VA.- The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) named the winners of the first annual VMFA Aaron Siskind Award for Photography today. Two artists, Qiana Mestrich and Shikeith, each received an unrestricted prize of $25,000 in support of their ongoing creative work.

“Supporting artists is a core part of our mission, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is proud to support the practice of photography as an important means of creative expression,” said museum Director and CEO Alex Nyerges. “The Aaron Siskind Awards are purposeful and transformative –– enabling recipients to pursue major artistic projects.”

The goal of the award is to provide material support that enables photographers to complete a meaningful body of work — whether the continuation or finalization of a photographic series, the development of an exhibition, monograph or book project, or another major creative endeavor.

A panel of distinguished professionals in the field of photography and the visual arts, including Kaitlin Booher, the William and Sarah Ross Soter Associate Curator of Photography at the Columbus Museum of Art; Brendan Embser, senior editor of Aperture; and Carla Williams, photographer, archivist and scholar, evaluated 817 submissions.

The recipients were selected on the strength of their artistic vision, the quality and significance of their proposed projects and their contribution to the broader field of contemporary photography.

Reflecting on the work submitted by Mestrich and Shikeith, Williams said, “Their commitment not only to their individual creative practices, but to our collective knowledge and understanding of photography is both expansive and inspiring. Their highly personal, socially engaged imagery draws new voices into conversations about aesthetics, identity and history.”

Informed by her upbringing as the daughter of immigrants from Panama and Croatia, Qiana Mestrich is an interdisciplinary artist and photo historian who lives and works between Brooklyn and New York’s Hudson Valley. Her work critically engages with themes of Black mixed-race identity, motherhood, mothering and women’s corporate labor.

The Reinforcements are part of a larger digital archive Mestrich created as visual evidence of the office labor of women of color during the Information Age, specifically the period between the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to the early 2000s.

“Limited by the minimal photographs I could find online of the corporate labor history of women of color in the United States, I began to create my own speculative representations,” Mestrich said.

“Mestrich’s collages bring together office supplies, such as interoffice envelopes and punch cards, with images representing Black women entering the corporate workforce in the 1970s, often as secretaries. In doing so, Mestrich highlights feminism’s fault lines: Black women were sold a picture of success in advertising photography, one that could rarely be achieved through power suits or makeup,” said Booher. “The project works on multiple levels, but on a visual level, the collages are punchy and surreal.”

Shikeith, who lives and works in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is a multidisciplinary artist whose work investigates the sociopolitical structures and histories shaping — and often oppressing — the psychological landscapes of marginalized communities. Influenced by spiritual traditions from the African diaspora, his practice mines and reimagines methods of disentanglement and reconciliation.

Shikeith stated, “My photographic practice is an ongoing dialogue with the past, centering the Black masculine body as a site of deep spiritual and psychological inquiry. In my images, Black men often appear with their eyes closed, a recurring gesture toward interiority, and in states of profuse sweating or “spilling,” a visual metaphor for both physical release and emotional catharsis.”

In People Who Die Bad Don’t Stay in the Ground, Shikeith investigates the enduring specter of historical trauma. The artist explained, “photography becomes a means of making the hauntological visible, showing how unresolved historical events persist in the present, not as static memories but as active, shaping forces.”

“Shikeith’s excavation of American history is a profound statement about Black inheritance in the 21st century,” said Embser.

“We were deeply impressed by the strength of this year’s submissions, which reflect the vitality of contemporary photographic practice,” said Dr. Sarah Kennel, VMFA’s Aaron Siskind Curator of Photography and Director of the Raysor Center. “Both Qiana Mestrich and Shikeith approach their practices with extraordinary thoughtfulness and depth, using photography to probe urgent questions of identity, memory and history. Their work exemplifies the rigor and creativity that Aaron Siskind championed, and I am thrilled to launch this prize with such remarkable artists.”