The biannual Tierney Fellowship workshops took place at Market Photo Workshops in Johannesburg on the 3 and 4 October. This initiative takes the form of partnerships between a numbers of art schools locally and internationally.

Created by Mathew Tierney in 2003 “The primary goal of the Fellowship is to find tomorrow’s distinguished artists and leaders in the world of photography and assist them in overcoming the challenges that a photographer faces at the beginning of his or her career.” (http://www.tierneyfellowship.org)

Tierney fellows work with a mentor to develop a body of work towards a professional exhibition. Art schools locally include Market Photo Workshops, WITS and the Michaelis School of Fine Art. Internationally art schools include Academia de Artes Visuales, 
Bard College, 
Centro Fotográfico Manuel Álvarez Bravo, 
Fotomedia, 
International Center of Photography, 
National Institute of Design, 
New York University, Tisch School of the Arts,
Parsons, the New School for Design,
School of Visual Arts, 
Three Shadows Photography Art Center, 
Yale University School of Art.

Michaelis Tierney fellow for 2013, Ashley Walters, and his mentor, Svea Josephy, presented Ashley’s work to artists and photographers such as Pieter Hugo, David Goldblatt, Jo Ractliffe, John Fleetwood, Jodi Bieber, Andrew Tshabangu, Jeremy Wafer and Dorothee Kreutzfeldt.

The next Tierney fellowship workshops will be held at Michaelis in February 2014.