23rd - 31st AUGUST 2025 EKHAYA STORYTELLING, RESEARCH AND DIVE CENTRE, Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa

An image invites diverse interpretations and lets the imagination soar in many directions. The meaning and intent of what is constructed and conveyed emerge through series or collections of photographs. In the digital world, creating images is easier than ever, yet finding meaning in them and shaping effective narratives is increasingly difficult. The greatest challenge for the contemporary storyteller lies in discovering mechanisms to communicate ideas with clarity and impact.

Providing a multi-sensory space for reflection, discussion, and debate with storytellers on building contemporary visual narratives; The Power of Perspective photography lab is a long-awaited collaboration between NEWF and Claudi Carreras from VIST Projects. This lab seeks to explore storytelling, collaboration, the creation of contemporary visual narratives, editing, and dissemination strategies for the participating visual artists to engage on how to give meaning to your photographic and audiovisual series, creating compelling and effective visual narratives.

// CLAUDI CARRERAS SPAIN
CURATOR AND CULTURAL PRODUCER

DEA in Fine Arts from the University of Barcelona, Carreras is an independent curator, editor, cultural producer and photography researcher. As a curator, he has curated multiple exhibitions that have been shown in more than fifty countries, including "Laberinto de Miradas", "Cotidiano Latino", "ECO", "Africamericanos", "Inside the curve (NGS)" and Amazònies, the ancestral future.

He curated the festival Paraty em Foco in Brazil, where he participated from 2011 to 2015, and the selection for Latin America of the Biennal Photo Quai of the Quai Branly Museum in Paris in 2013 and 2015. He was advisor and curator of the Latin American Forum of Photography of São Paulo since its creation in 2007 until 2019. He has been a jury member of important competitions such as World Press Photo, POY Latam, Sony International Award or the Spanish National Photography Award. As an editor, he has published more than thirty photography books in various publishing houses, especially in Editora Madalena of Brazil, of which he is a founding partner.

Ahead of the Power of Perspectives collaboration, he attended the #NEWF2025 Fellows Summit and Congress where he facilitated Listening Images and explored Africamericano as a visual case study.

He is currently the founding director of the VIST Foundation - learn more at www.vistprojects.com

Meet the MENTORS

*Photograph by Musuk Nolte / NGS2023 Explorers Festival*

// andrés Cardona COLOMBIA
VISUAL ARTIST, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC EXPLORER

Andrés Cardona is a photographer, videographer, and artist from the Colombian Amazon. His work has been published in magazines such as Time and Vogue and newspapers such as the Washington Post, El País, and Al Jazeera. He is dedicated to documenting the Amazon and its diverse realities, such as armed conflict, rainforest destruction, wildlife guardians, and the ancestral knowledge of indigenous communities. He is co-director of the Amazonia es Aquí project by Vist Projects and has won the Poy Latam award for best long-form project in 2023, the Eugene Smith Grant in 2020, the National Geographic Fund for Journalists Emergency Grant in 2021, the Magnum Foundation's Global COVID Project in 2021, and the Gabo Award for journalistic coverage in 2024, together with a team of journalists who developed the Amazon Underworld platform. He has been a National Geographic Explorer since 2022.

// JORGE PANCHOAGA COLOMBIA
photographer, filmmaker AND CONTENT DIRECTOR

Colombian photographer and filmmaker. His work explores the intricate relationships between humans and their environment, merging memory and imagination, past and present, in an effort to provoke reflection on what shapes reality. He often uses photography, video, and audio symbolically to evoke reflections on the conflicts and tensions faced by the communities he works with.

His work has received various distinctions, including the Colombo-Swiss National Photography Award, the Nexofoto Award, multiple recognitions at POY Latam in different years, as well as research grants from the National Geographic Society. He is the co-founder and content director of Vist Projects, a platform dedicated to image-based research on contemporary issues. His work has been published in several photobooks and exhibited at international festivals and biennials in the Americas, Europe, and Asia, in addition to being part of contemporary art collections. His work has been featured in media outlets such as National Geographic, The New York Times, El País (Spain), Süddeutsche Zeitung (Germany), British Journal of Photography, among others.

He attended the #NEWF2025 Fellows Summit and Congress where he lead a powerful session, Where Images Dwell.

// Marta Nin i Camps SPAIN
CULTURAL DIRECTOR AND CURATOR

Marta Nin i Camps holds a degree in Information Sciences from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. For 15 years, she worked as a journalist, excelling in directing documentaries and investigative reports for the program Línea 900 on Spanish Television (TVE).

She also worked as a scriptwriter for several television and radio programs. Her work has been recognized with several awards, including the First Prize at the Atlantic International Environmental Film Festival in 1998, the Second Prize at Manos Unidas in 1997 and 1998, and she was a finalist at Friga-95, among other accolades. After earning a postgraduate degree in Museology from Pompeu Fabra University in 2005, she broadened her focus to the cultural field. In 2019, she was appointed General Director of Casa América Cataluña.

Over the years, she has participated in numerous curatorial projects nationally and internationally, including directing a permanent project at the León Jimenes Center in the Dominican Republic. She also headed the publishing house Editora Madalena in São Paulo, Brazil, for over two years. Marta Nin is a leading figure in the fields of communication and culture. Her extensive experience is reflected in her debut novel, "The Story That Haunts Me."

// Anthony Ochieng Onyango KENYA

Anthony is an award winning Wildlife Ecologist, Educator, Conservation and Underwater Photographer and Filmmaker based in Nairobi, Kenya. His work is focused on creating conservation content that will inspire conservation action across all ages and races.

He is the Executive Director and Founder of TonyWild Foundation. A platform for promoting conservation action by creating awareness on wildlife conservation through photography, film and science and he is a Board Member of Conservation Alliance of Kenya (CAK).

Tony is a 2024 National Geographic Society Explorer.

// Breno Luckano ANGOLA

Breno Mayoyo Teixeira Lucano, son of Angola. With roots in Huila, he is a photographer and tourism guide. Eternally in love with our Angola, he has received several awards and nominations in the course of his career as a photographer, such as the best photographer award from UNICEF Africa in 2019 and was nominated for a collective exhibition at the Camoes Institute. In 2022 he participated in a National Geographic expedition for the Okavango Delta Project. Breno embraces new experiences and has a passion for social causes.

// Cahali João ANGOLA

Cahali Boaventura Manuel João "Khali" holds a degree in the Sociology of Education, and has practiced as a professional photographer for 6 years. As a tour guide, his fascination with nature, and passion for street portraits, freeze landscapes allows him to capture moments and evoke emotions through his unique lens. His mission is to make a difference and leave the world better than he found it.

// Cléa Rekhou ALGERIA

Cléa Rekhou (b. 1988, Paris) is an Algerian-French visual storyteller based in Algiers. Self-taught since 2016, she continuously redefines her practice, exploring social issues from overlooked perspectives and questions of identity rooted in her Algerian heritage.Her visual work blends photography with other creative tools to express a subjective view of the world, highlighting people, their paths, and their stories. Since 2024, with the support of the National Geographic Society, Cléa has been documenting the socio-environmental challenges of desertification in Algeria’s steppe. Her project works in collaboration with local communities to raise awareness about resilience and sustainable land practices. She is a member of Collective 220, Women Photograph, and a National Geographic Explorer. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at Les Rencontres d’Arles, Vantage Point Sharjah, and Amman Photo Festival, and was most recently shown at the 2024 Canex in Algiers.

// Esther Mbabazi UGANDA

Based in Kampala, Uganda, Esther Mbabazi uses storytelling and photojournalism to explore changing conditions on the African continent, with a focus on the social, economic, physical, and emotional aspects of daily life. She is a National Geographic Explorer, Contributor to Everyday Africa and a Magnum Foundation Photography and Social Justice Fellow. Her work has been published in the New York Times, TIME magazine, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, and has been commissioned by a variety of non-governmental organisations.

// Guerchom Ndebo DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC of CONGO

Guerchom Ndebo is a Congolese visual artist with a passion for images. He uses his camera to provoke reflection on equality, cultural differences and solidarity. A communications graduate, he perfected his art through the Congo in Conversation project. His first series, “Makala”, explores the impact of coal on the environment. A contributor to Getty Images and AFP, his work has been published by The New York Times, CNN, RFI and other media. Winner of several awards, he is also a National Geographic Explorer.

// Hani El-Moustafa EGYPT

Hani El-Moustafa is a writer-photographer currently based in Alexandria, Egypt. His works focus on the cultural aspects of the cities he visits or lives in. Between 2022 and 2024, he produced photographic projects in different cities like: Alexandria, Damietta, Quseir, Rosetta, and Dakahlia in Egypt, and Kairouan and Zaghouan in Tunisia. In 2025, he produced four features about the cultural life in the city of Berlin, Germany for Al-Dostour, an Egyptian newspaper. Before that, he worked on similar projects in Jamaica and Puerto Rico. The latter has developed into a published book in English in 2018, and a published photo essay in Arabic, under the title “La Nina de Las Flores” in 2022. Currently, he is producing a fictional visual storytelling project as a part of an art residency program in Alexandria called “The Mind As a City”. The project is going to be showcased in July and August 2025.

// Imara Njeri KENYA

Imara Njeri is a Kenyan visual storyteller and photographer specialising in wildlife, portrait, and product photography. Currently the Resident Photographer at Ishara in the Masai Mara, she combines technical expertise with a deep passion for conservation and cultural storytelling. A NEWF Fellow and KCB Photography Award winner, Imara uses her lens to highlight beauty, purpose, and untold narratives.

Imara is a 2024 NEWF Her Lens Cinematography fellow.

// Inès Arsi TUNISIA

Inès Arsi is a Tunisian filmmaker and screenwriter whose work blends the personal and the political through a poetic, hybrid approach. Trained at ESAC in Tunis and La Fémis Summer Doc in Paris, she brings a distinct voice to the intersection of documentary, fiction, and visual experimentation—working with sewn photographs, painted archives, and deconstructed images. Her acclaimed short films, including Oui mais non, Flesh and Blood, and Thick Skin, confront themes of silence, stigma, and resistance, particularly around gender and mental health.

Inès is a Hot Docs Blue Ice Fellow and a 2024 NEWF Her Lens Cinematography Fellow, and her projects are supported by AFAC, CNCI, IDFA Project Space, and the Atlas Workshops. Her first feature, Pure Madness, continues her exploration of family, inheritance, and psychological rupture. Through her practice, Inès forges a cinema of remembrance and reparation—where storytelling becomes both artistic act and political gesture, and where personal archives reclaim their place in collective memory.

// Luyanda Shabalala SOUTH AFRICA

Luyanda Shabalala is a wildlife cinematographer, film director, musician, sound mixer and photographer based in South Africa. He is extremely passionate about wildlife, sound and telling stories. He has been in the industry for over 5 years and is on a journey to share stories on the beauty and importance of the wildlife world and the people in those natural spaces. Luyanda has had the opportunity to produce films in South Africa, one namely as part of the Camera crew on PBS Nature’s “The Ocean’s Greatest Feast”, short documentary films in Austria and Botswana have since followed. He has also worked as a video contributor with Mongabay and a fellow at Jackson Wild as a participant in the 2022 Jackson Wild Media Lab.

// Stuart Mathew Tibaweswa UGANDA

Stuart Tibaweswa is a Kampala-based Ugandan documentary photographer and National Geographic Explorer with a keen focus on marginalised communities and their intersections with broader societal issues. His storytelling approach seeks to challenge stereotypes and elevate underrepresented narratives, particularly in the areas of social, human rights, and environmental issues. In 2017, Tibaweswa won the Uganda Press Photo Award’s Young Photographer Award and also participated in the Vital Impact Mentorship Program 2023 with his story, Shifting Seasons. His work has been published in the New York Times, Mail and Guardian, Continent Magazine, and commissioned by organisations including Agence France-Presse (AFP), Der Spiegel, UNICEF, UNFPA, The Carter Center, and Sightsavers, among others.

// Victor Adewale NIGERIA

Victor is a Lagos based documentary photographer who also engages with other art forms like film and literary expression. His work is human-centred, introspective, and reflective of his community, as well as contemporary social and environmental issues. In 2018, he was selected to attend the Canon Storytelling workshop at the African Artists Foundation in Lagos and went on to receive the Prince Claus seed award in 2021. He is a finalist for Magnum Foundation Counter Histories Fellowship .His works have been published or forthcoming in Okay Africa, Bloomberg, National Geographic Magazine and exhibited at Art X Lagos and the 2024 Bamako Biennial for contemporary African photography in Mali. Victor is a member of the African Photojournalism Database, and Diversify Photo. He is a recipient of the Prince Claus Fund Award, Foundry Workshop (Golden Scarf Award), National Geographic Explorer grant, and a nominee for the 2025 Foam Paul Huf Award.