Vital Impacts: Tatsiana Chypsanava: Te Urewera – the Living Ancestor of Tūhoe individuals

Now in its third yr, Vital Impacts has awarded seven environmental pictures fellowships totaling $50,000 and eleven year-long mentorships to visionary photographers illuminating the profound and infrequently fragile connection between individuals and the planet. As help for indepth environmental storytelling declines and the urgency of those tales continues to develop, Vital Impacts champions the artists whose photographs spark empathy, encourage motion, and remind us of our collective duty to guard the Earth we name residence.

Vital Impacts is thrilled to announce the 2026 recipients of $50,000 in Environmental Photography Fellowships, honoring the legacy of visionary leaders together with Dr. Jane Goodall, DBE, Dr. Sylvia Earle, Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, Chico Mendes, Madonna Thunder Hawk, E.O. Wilson and Ian Lemaiyan. Fellows have been chosen for his or her regionally rooted storytelling that highlights options and neighborhood resilience. In addition, 11 rising photographers will take part in year-long intensive mentorships, creating their craft and imaginative and prescient.

This yr’s judging panel included Alessia Glaviano, Head of Global PhotoVogue, Azu Nwagbogu, Founder and Director of African Artists’ Foundation and Lagos Photo Festival Evgenia Arbugaeva, National Geographic Storytelling Fellow and Academy Award Nominee, Okayathy Moran, Deputy Director of Photography at National Geographic and Pat Kane, Vital Impacts Environmental Jane Goodall Fellowship Winner.

Tatsiana Chypsanava (Aotearoa, New Zealand) has simply been awarded the Dr. Sylvia Earle Fellowship to proceed her long-term documentary undertaking with Ngāi Tūhoe, the individuals of Te Urewera, specializing in their main mannequin of Indigenous guardianship over ancestral lands and its contribution to world conversations on Indigenous sovereignty and environmental justice.

Tatsiana Chypsanava (b. 1980, Belarus) is a documentary photographer primarily based in Aotearoa New Zealand. Descended from the Komi peoples of the Northwest Ural, she champions range in visible storytelling via her membership in Diversify Photo and Women Photograph.

A grantee of the Pulitzer Center (2023) and Wellcome Trust (2020), Chypsanava has honed her craft via prestigious applications together with the Eddie Adams Workshop (2021), Missouri Photo Workshop (2022), and Foundry Photojournalism Workshop (2023).

Her work has appeared in main publications together with The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and New Zealand Geographic. In 2025, she acquired the World Press Photo Award (Long-Term Project, Asia-Pacific Oceania area) for her collection “Te Urewera – The Living Ancestor of Tūhoe People.”

Instagram: @tatsiana_chypsanava

Te Urewera – the Living Ancestor of Tūhoe individuals

The undertaking goals to create a multi-faceted exploration of Te Urewera and the Tūhoe individuals via a long-form picture essay, which is able to function the core factor. This essay will function my pictures capturing the deep connection between the Tūhoe neighborhood and their ancestral land. Accompanying this visible narrative will probably be insights from Dr. Pounamu Jade Aikman, offering historic and cultural context, tailor-made for each digital and print codecs to maximise accessibility.

I’ve been embedded within the Tūhoe neighborhood since 2014, constructing belief and creating working strategies rooted in transparency and respect. This long-term engagement ensures genuine storytelling and a collaborative course of all through the undertaking. An audio element will improve the expertise, that includes recordings of forest sounds and Tūhoe elders sharing conventional data in Te Reo Māori with English subtitles. Drone footage will spotlight the ecological significance of Te Urewera, complemented by video interviews with neighborhood members sharing private tales about their relationship with the land.

A historic timeline will illustrate Te Urewera’s journey and authorized recognition, utilizing archival photographs, scientific observations, and recorded oral histories spanning the final century. The undertaking emphasizes bilingual presentation in English and Te Reo Māori, highlighting the function of language preservation in sustaining Indigenous data. Ultimately, this initiative will culminate in a multimedia story and web site that gives a wealthy instructional narrative celebrating the distinctive bond between the Tūhoe individuals and Te Urewera. A ultimate chapter can even be produced for a forthcoming e-book to additional discover and doc this story in print.

In addition to collaboration with the Tūhoe tribal workplace in Ruatāhuna, Dr. Pounamu Jade Aikman is a key associate. As a author, he’ll present crucial historic and cultural insights from his doctoral analysis on Tūhoe resistance and state violence. His function consists of conducting interviews with Tūhoe neighborhood members and contributing to narrative growth, making certain correct illustration of Tūhoe views. His connections throughout the neighborhood and experience in Indigenous points will improve the undertaking’s depth relating to Te Urewera’s authorized personhood and broader implications.

We will collect suggestions and measure affect via a number of strategies: analyzing attain and engagement metrics of revealed tales; conducting surveys and interviews with the Tūhoe neighborhood to evaluate perceptions of accuracy and involvement; monitoring inquiries from policymakers and conservation organizations in regards to the Tūhoe mannequin; assessing consciousness of Te Urewera’s authorized personhood amongst environmental teams; and monitoring Tūhoe youth participation to judge engagement and curiosity in conservation initiatives.

Our distribution and engagement technique prioritizes collaborative storytelling and neighborhood management over data. While many organizations give attention to broad digital outreach by way of standalone web sites, we’ll associate with established media platforms comparable to National Geographic and main worldwide information shops. This strategy ensures world attain whereas sustaining the integrity and authority of our messaging, notably relating to Indigenous-led conservation efforts.

We are concentrating on environmental advocates, policymakers, and educational communities, notably these desirous about Indigenous rights and sustainable practices. The viewers will achieve insights into profitable fashions of Indigenous-led conservation, modern authorized frameworks for environmental safety, and the combination of conventional data with fashionable science to fight local weather change. Regionally, the story can affect New Zealand’s environmental coverage; internationally, it will probably function a mannequin for adaptation in different contexts. Social media campaigns will additional spotlight key findings, making certain that the Tūhoe retain management over the narrative surrounding their neighborhood. This twin strategy amplifies attain whereas fostering deeper connections between Indigenous communities and world audiences, setting a precedent for future conservation initiatives.

About the Fellowships

Vital Impacts is devoted to supporting visible storytellers who seize compelling, solutions-focused environmental tales on the native stage. We are grateful to have the ability to provide one $20,000 fellowship and 6 $5,000 fellowships to assist carry these important tales to life. Fellows have twelve months to develop their initiatives, with help from Vital Impacts to publish and showcase their work.

“Our aim is to support and nurture the next generation of environmental storytellers through grants and mentoring programs,” mentioned founder Ami Vitale “We aspire to create opportunities for these emerging voices to explore complex environmental issues with originality and nuance at this critical moment.” 

The 2026 Mentorship Recipients

In addition to the grants, ten rising photographers from numerous areas will take part in an intensive mentorship program designed to boost their storytelling abilities and inventive imaginative and prescient.

Over the span of twelve months, these people may have the chance to interact in one-on-one classes with trade specialists, famend photographers, and influential picture editors. Through these classes, contributors will refine their storytelling abilities, obtain steerage on navigating the trade, and set up important connections.

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About Vital Impacts

Over the previous fifty years, Earth’s wildlife populations have declined by practically three-quarters, a profound shift that challenges us to rethink how we take care of the pure world. Yet even within the face of those losses, there’s extraordinary purpose for hope. Around the planet, communities, scientists, and storytellers are working collectively to reimagine options, restore ecosystems, and defend the locations all of us depend upon.

Vital Impacts is a women-led 501c3 non-profit based in 2021 by Ami Vitale and Eileen Mignoni to advance conservation via visible storytelling, neighborhood partnership, and strategic funding in native options. We harness the facility of artwork, visible journalism, and neighborhood partnerships to help conservation and illuminate pathways towards a extra resilient future. Central to our work is investing in storytellers. More than 1,000 journalists throughout 87 nations have acquired mentorship via our applications, gaining the instruments and help to report on environmental points with depth, sensitivity, and solutions-driven focus. Their tales carry world visibility to native challenges and to the individuals working creatively to unravel them.

This storytelling community is paired with deep neighborhood engagement. Through partnerships, Vital Impacts has raised $3.5 million for native conservation initiatives. These sources assist safeguard crucial ecosystems, help community-led conservation, and be certain that these working closest to the land have the help they should succeed.

We are additionally cultivating the subsequent era of environmental stewards. Our in-person pupil applications have reached 30,000 younger individuals, inviting them to see themselves as energetic contributors in shaping a more healthy, extra compassionate world. By connecting college students with highly effective tales and the individuals behind them, we spark curiosity, company, and a lifelong dedication to caring for the planet.

At the center of Vital Impacts is the assumption that tales remodel understanding and that understanding drives motion. By elevating native voices, bridging science and narrative, and directing sources the place they create lasting change, we’re constructing a world neighborhood of people that acknowledge that restoring the planet shouldn’t be solely potential however already underway.

Instagram: @important.impacts

Executive Director: Ami Vitale

Ami Vitale is a National Geographic Explorer at Large, award-winning photographer, author, documentary filmmaker, and the founding father of Vital Impacts. Her work explores the important connections between individuals, wildlife, and the planet. With practically three a long time of expertise working in over 100 nations, Ami makes use of storytelling as a instrument for conservation, empathy, and motion.

Her profession started in battle zones, the place she witnessed firsthand how environmental degradation—together with useful resource shortage, displacement, and local weather instability—profoundly impacts human lives. These early experiences formed her conviction that environmental and social points are inseparable, guiding her towards long-term, solutions-focused work that highlights resilience, collaboration, and risk.

Her work has been acknowledged with quite a few honors, together with Conservation International’s Lui-Walton Innovators Fellowship, the Lucie Humanitarian Award, the Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service, the Daniel Pearl Award for Outstanding Reporting, and 6 World Press Photo awards. She is an honorary fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and an inductee into the North Carolina Media and Journalism Hall of Fame.

Through each her nonprofit management and her personal inventive work, she stays deeply dedicated to empowering rising voices and advancing a extra hopeful, solutions-driven future for our planet.

Instagram: @amivitale