The GFX Challenge Grant: Five Years, Five Projects at ICP

Fujifilm's GFX Challenge Grant selects photographers each year on the strength of ambitious proposals. Grantees receive funding, mentorship from Fujifilm imaging specialists, and the use of the GFX System, the company's large-format digital camera platform, to complete a body of work on their own terms. For this presentation, ICP's curatorial team chose one project from each of the program's first five years.

The five photographers are Rodrigo Illescas (2021), Katie Orlinsky (2022), Shina Peng (2023), Reinis Hofmanis (2024) and Lee-Ann Olwage (2025). Their subjects and continents differ, but each project is a long-form undertaking, carefully conceived, in which the precision of large-format imaging serves the story.

For Japanese readers, the standout is Shina Peng, born in 1998 in Kobe. Her project Furusato follows her family's history: her grandfather fled to Taiwan during the Chinese Civil War, lost contact with his mother, and returned to his hometown of Linxiang, Hunan, in 1988, forty years later, after his mother had died. Peng began the project after her grandfather's death, when she recognized that she had been rejecting the Chinese identity he handed down. The work includes images such as Lunch and baijiu (2023).

The other four projects are equally distinct. Illescas's The Cathedrals of Nostalgia looks at Argentine towns left behind after train lines closed, and the few residents who remain. Orlinsky's The Last Reindeer documents the Inuvialuit Settlement Region taking over Canada's only reindeer herd in 2021, against the sharp decline of Arctic caribou. Hofmanis's Shared Horizon examines Latvia's eastern border as fences and watchtowers reshape ecology and family ties. Olwage's Weaving Stars and Palm Leaves portrays Amazigh women weavers of Morocco's Atlas Mountains, who pass rug-making from mother to daughter using natural fibers and dyes.

The show is on the ground floor of ICP, with its main entrance at 84 Ludlow Street, and admission is free. It runs October 15 to 19, 2026, and is presented by Fujifilm as part of FUJIKINA NYC 2026.