Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography

IN MEMORIAM: Documentary Filmmaker Robert Gardner dies at 88

The Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography funds an “established practitioner of the photographic arts to create and subsequently publish through the Peabody Museum a major book of photographs on the human condition anywhere in the world.”

The same body of work may also be featured in a photographic exhibition at the Peabody Museum. A series of art books of selected fellows' work is published by the Peabody Museum Press and may be purchased from the museum.

The Fellowship committee invites nominations from a rotating panel of curators, educators, and independent photo professionals from around the world; nominees are reviewed and selected by a committee of four. The Fellowship provides a generous stipend and is unique in its dedication to funding professional documentary photography.

The Fellowship was given by Robert G. Gardner (1925–2014), award-winning documentary filmmaker and author, whose works have entered the permanent canon of non-fiction filmmaking. Gardner’s works include the documentary films “Dead Birds” and “Forest of Bliss” and the book Gardens of War. With the Peabody Museum Press he has published Making "Dead Birds" (2007), Human Documents: Eight Photographers (2009), and Just Representations (2010). In the 1970s Gardner produced and hosted “Screening Room,” a series of more than one hundred 90-minute programs on independent and experimental filmmaking. The series, considered an invaluable historical record of modern cinema, has been transferred to digital format, for archival preservation by the Museum of Film and Broadcasting in New York City. Robert Gardner received Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees from Harvard University, and was director of the Film Study Center from 1957 to 1997. He was also founder and long time director of the Carpenter Center for Visual Arts and taught the Visual Arts at Harvard for almost 40 years. Gardner is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.