How would the news look if editors saw the world as you do?

Alexandra Bell, a journalist with a keen eye for detail, exposes how language and imagery are used to perpetuate racist narratives in the mainstream media. A queer black woman who describes herself as a person at the margins, she offers a perspective that often confront the mainstream media’s racial attitudes. Her work takes the form of meticulous re-imaginings of New York Times pages. Her Counternarrative series shows how language, images and layout affect meaning.

Since 1985, the International Center of Photography has recognized outstanding achievements in photography with its prestigious Infinity Awards. The awards ceremony is also ICP’s primary fundraising benefit, with its revenues assisting the center's various programs.

This year MediaStorm produced films for the following winners: Lifetime Achievement: Bruce Davidson; Applied: Alexandra Bell; Art: Samuel Fosso; Artist's Book: Dayanita Singh, Museum Bhavan; Critical Writing and Research: Maurice Berger, Race Stories column for the Lens section of the New York Times; Documentary and Photojournalism: Amber Bracken; and Emerging Photographer: Natalie Keyssar; and for Online Platform and New Media: Women Photograph.

Alexandra Bell, a journalist with a keen eye for detail, exposes how language and imagery are used to perpetuate racist narratives in the mainstream media. A queer black woman who describes herself as a person at the margins, she offers a perspective that often confront the mainstream media’s racial attitudes. Her work takes the form of meticulous re-imaginings of New York Times pages. Her Counternarrative series shows how language, images and layout affect meaning.

We conducted our interview with Alexandra Bell in her studio space in Brooklyn, a site visually relevant to her story. Though well isolated from street noise, its smooth concrete walls and hard floor presented a reverberant environment that threatened to yield echoing audio, distracting from her comments about her work.

We spread six moving blankets, each one 72 square feet, around the floor and on one wall—and not too smoothly, either. We kept them wrinkly and bunched up to absorb sound and interfere with reflections. The resulting sound was good!

The film premiered on April 9, 2018 at the ICP Infinity Awards Gala in New York City. The film was a special feature of the evening, and a critical fundraising tool.

Since 1985, the International Center of Photography has recognized outstanding achievements in photography with its prestigious Infinity Awards. The awards ceremony is also ICP’s primary fundraising benefit, with its revenues assisting the center's various programs.

Harbers Studios commissioned MediaStorm, on behalf of ICP, to create a short film about each of the recipients to screen at the awards ceremony and to display online. The films pay tribute to the contributions of each artist to the craft and field of photography and demonstrate ICP's commitment to them.

As a privately funded nonprofit arts and education organization, ICP depends in large part on friends such as you for support. Your generosity is vital to ICP as it continues to grow and succeed in its mission: to present photography's extraordinary power to the public.

There are many ways to give to ICP: Donate to the Annual Fund, create a scholarship, sponsor exhibitions and education programs, contribute to the Collection, or make a planned gift.

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