Mandana Mahdavi Awarded NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Photography

Mandana Mahdavi, selected among 99 artists statewide, received the 2025 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship, an $8,000 unrestricted grant recognizing excellence in Photography and supporting ongoing professional artistic development.

New York, NY – Mandana Mahdavi, a documentary photographer whose practice centers on long-form, community-engaged storytelling, is one of 99 New York State artists to be recognized with a 2025 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship. Her work explores identity, resilience, and social justice, uncovering the psychological undercurrents that define human experience. The NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship Program, administered by New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) with leadership support from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), makes unrestricted cash grants of $8,000 to artists working in 15 disciplines, recognizing five disciplines per year on a triennial basis.

 

This year, NYFA has awarded a total of $753,000 to 99 artists (including 7 collaborations) throughout New York State in the following disciplines: Architecture/Environmental Structures/Design, Choreography, Music/Sound, Photography, and Playwriting/Screenwriting. Finalists were also recognized with unrestricted cash grants of $1,000. The program is highly competitive, and this year’s recipients and finalists were selected from 3,672 applicants in discipline-specific peer-review panels.

 

The full lists of recipients, finalists, and industry panelists who made the selections can be found here.

 

Mandana Mahdavi is a documentary photographer based in the United States. Born to Iranian-German parents and raised in London, she spent her formative years in Madrid and New York, drawing on a multicultural foundation. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Sciences and a Master’s in Management, and began her career in the visual arts before transitioning to photography. This interdisciplinary background informs her research-driven, narrative-focused photographic practice.

 

She is an alumna of the International Center of Photography’s Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism program, where she was awarded the Director’s Fellowship, and was selected for the Eddie Adams Workshop XXXIV. Her work has been recognized and supported by institutions including the International Center of Photography, Documentary Arts, the Lucie Foundation, The Alexia, The Rita and Alex Hillman Foundation, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Her practice centers on long-form, community-engaged storytelling that explores identity, resilience, and social justice.

 

Since it was launched in 1985, the NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship program has awarded over $36.5+ million to 5,611 artists. Esteemed alumni from this year’s recognized disciplines include Kyle Abraham (Choreography ‘10), Vito Acconci (Architecture/Environmental Structures ’00), Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio (Architecture ’85, ’87, ’98), Elliot Goldenthal (Music Composition ’89), Eli Keszler (Music/Sound ‘16), Tony Kushner (Playwriting/Screenwriting ’87), Deana Lawson (Photography ’06), Zhou Long (Music Composition ’00), Meredith Monk (Music Composition ’85, Choreography ’96), Shirin Neshat (Photography ’96), Lynn Nottage (Playwriting/Screenwriting ’94, ’00), Pauline Oliveros (Music Composition ’89), Sarah Oppenheimer (Architecture/Environmental Structures/Design ’06, ’10, ’16), Suzan-Lori Parks (Playwriting/Screenwriting ’90), Justin Peck (Choreography ’13), J.T. Rogers (Playwriting/Screenwriting ‘04, ‘08, ‘16), Swoon (Architecture/Environmental Structures/Design ’13), Carmelita Tropicana (Playwriting/Screenwriting ’91), and Hank Willis Thomas (Photography ‘06).

 

Each year, the NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship provides a lens for contemporary artistic expression. The themes, ideas, and materials used by the 2025 Fellows reflect and respond to the larger social, political, and economic issues of our day. Artists across categories are exploring topics including diasporic and immigrant identity; gender, race, and sexuality; environmental and disability justice; and civic engagement.

 

In addition to no-strings-attached financial support, the NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship provides encouragement for artists at all career stages and creative disciplines to continue making work.

 

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The New York Foundation for the Arts: The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) was established in 1971 to empower artists at critical stages in their creative lives. Today, the nonprofit organization’s programs and services are far-reaching and are rooted in a wealth of physical and online resources. Each year, NYFA awards more than $4 million in cash grants to individual visual, performing, and literary artists throughout the United States. NYFA’s Fiscal Sponsorship program, one of the oldest and most reputable in the country, helps national artists and arts organizations raise and manage an average of $4 million annually. NYFA’s Learning programs, including its Artist as Entrepreneur and Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program, provide thousands of artists, creatives, and arts administrators with professional development training and support. NYFA’s website, NYFA.org, is used by more than 1 million people and features more than 20,000 opportunities and resources available to artists in all disciplines.

 

About the New York State Council on the Arts

The mission of the New York State Council on the Arts is to foster and advance the full breadth of New York State’s arts, culture and creativity for all. For FY 2026, the Council on the Arts will award over $161 million, serving organizations and artists across all 10 of the state’s regions. The Council on the Arts further advances New York’s creative culture by convening leaders in the field and providing organizational and professional development opportunities and informational resources. Created by Governor Nelson Rockefeller in 1960 and continued with the support of Governor Hochul and the New York State Legislature, the Council is an agency that is part of the Executive Branch. For more information on NYSCA, please visit arts.ny.gov/SOAfellow, and follow NYSCA’s Facebook page, on X @NYSCArts and Instagram @NYSCouncilontheArts.