Explore the works of the 2019 recipients from the inaugural Leica Women Foto Project award at Leica Gallery Boston, beginning on March 5th. The exhibiting artists include Debi Cornwall, Yana Paskova and Eva Woolridge whose work highlight today's social and political climate through the female perspective. Selected from a pool of 600 applicants, the unique series by Debi, Yana and Eva give a voice to those underrepresented in society, bringing to light stories left untold.

The exhibition will be on view until April 26th, 2020.

Debi Cornwall presents "Necessary Fictions", which explores the staging and performance of American power in immersive, realistic military wargames. In this project, Cornwall photographs the mysterious country of "Atropia." Though fictional, Atropia actually exists: mock Afghan and Iraqi villages have been constructed on military bases across the United States to host immersive, realistic military training exercises for troops preparing to deploy. On ten such sites around the country, Cornwall documents these mock villages, battle scenarios, and "cultural role-players," with the goal of examining how fictions are deployed and embraced, and to invite critical inquiry among military and civilian viewers alike about a society in which war has become the rule rather than the exception.

Yana Paskova is a Bulgaria-born, Chicago-bred, Brooklyn-based photojournalist and writer who uses her experience as a political asylum immigrant to find a way to bridge humans' understanding of each other in her series, "Where Women Rule". She describes the project as "a visual and sociological look at what happens when cultural norms of gender are amended or removed — via the all-female societies across the world, where women gather for shelter or in matriarchy — leaving us with new notions of femininity and masculinity, human bonds, family, and the fluid boundaries of identity."

As told through her lens as a self-proclaimed African-American and Chinese-American queer woman, Eva Woolridge's personal experiences come to life in her project "The Size of a Grapefruit". The series is an artistic interpretation of Woolridge's medically traumatic experiences following her diagnosis of a dermoid cyst - the size of a grapefruit – and consequential removal of her right ovary, which she believes could have been saved had medical professionals taken swifter action following their early conversations.

For more information, visit Leica Gallery Boston here.