Dorothea Lange fellow’s work goes on display; applications open for 2003 award

Wendy Cheng photo, 1998. An alley behind a temple on Minsheng East Road, Taipei, Taiwan

02 October 2002 | A new exhibit featuring large-format color photographs by Wendy Cheng, winner of this year’s Dorothea Lange Fellowship, is on display in Moffitt Undergraduate Library, opposite the elevators at the front entrance level.

The $4,000 prize, administered by Public Affairs, is awarded each year to a campus faculty member, graduate student, or senior admitted for graduate studies. The prize is given for outstanding work in documentary photography and a creative plan for future work.

A second-year graduate student in geography, Cheng was honored for her photographs of the urban landscape in Taipei, Taiwan and Tokyo, Japan – two locales with strikingly different approaches to space.

Cheng says her work is influenced by the New Topographics movement launched in the 1970s, which “challenged people to consider all of their surroundings – pretty gardens as well as the parking lot next door – as part of the landscape.”
Using her fellowship money, she traveled around the country by car this summer, documenting new tract-housing developments in the West.

Candidates for the 2003 award must apply by Dec. 2.