Susan Tifft Fellows

Photograph by Bear Guerra for Fonografia Collective, a documentary-project collaborative with 2018 Susan Tifft Fellow Ruxandra

Photograph by Bear Guerra for Fonografia Collective, a documentary-project collaborative with 2018 Susan Tifft Fellow Ruxandra Guidi.

The Susan Tifft Fellows, the inaugural program of the Susan E. Tifft Initiative on Documentary and Journalism, are selected from an international pool of women media artists, journalists, and documentarians for a one-week creative residency at the Center for Documentary Studies (CDS). Fellowships are granted by invitation for ongoing work that experiments with and pushes forward issues at the intersection of documentary and journalism and that explores narrative forms, digital expression, and stories that contribute to a more just, inclusive world. As the signature event of their residency, Tifft Fellows give a public lecture at CDS that reflects on their work and how they think about the practice—and art—of documentary and journalism.

Filmmaker Daphne McWilliams is the 2019 Susan Tifft Fellow.

A portrait of Daphne McWilliams

Daphne McWilliams

2019 Susan Tifft Fellow

2019 Susan Tifft Fellow Daphne McWilliams, a native New Yorker, is a documentary film producer and director. In her public talk at CDS, “Crossing the Fourth Wall: When the Filmmaker Becomes the Subject,” McWilliams will speak about her passion for documentary and the making of her film In a Perfect World—when she found herself not only the director but the subject—as well as her evolution in the world of doc film as a woman of a color.
A black and white headshot of Ruxandra Guidi

Ruxandra Guidi

2018 Susan Tifft Fellow

2018 Susan Tifft Fellow Ruxandra Guidi, a native of Caracas, Venezuela, tells stories through radio, photography, multimedia, the printed word, and public installations and events. In Guidi’s public presentation at CDS, “Despacito (Slowing Down): Socially Engaged Documentaries in Sound and on Site,” she gave an overview of her career and explored the question: from subject to audience, how do storytellers move beyond a singular voice?
Headshot of Nina Berman

Nina Berman

2017 Susan Tifft Fellow

Photographer Nina Berman was the inaugural Susan Tifft Fellow in 2017. Berman’s talk, “Counternarrative and Collaboration in Documentary and Journalism,” presented an overview of her photographic work, with an emphasis on the role of the photographer as a politicized investigator working across documentary and journalistic platforms. She also addressed collaboration in the making and dissemination of socially engaged work.