Caroline Riley Awarded NEH Fellowship to Support Second Book
Caroline M. Riley (BA, 2004; PhD, 2016) has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for 2023–2024 to support her second book, Thérèse Bonney and the Power of Global Syndicated Photography. Thérèse Bonney (1894–1978) had a prolific career as a photographer, collector, curator, journalist, and American spy, taking approximately 50,000 photos on such diverse topics as modernist art, women working, and World War II. Through her innovative syndication business—the Bonney Service—she dispersed photos taken in nineteen countries to a global market of thirty-three nations. And yet, her legacy has been reduced to a handful of images and without the lens of the Service to explain her importance to news photography. Through her newly processed archive, Caroline’s book reconsiders Bonney to produce a full account of her as an intellectual authority on art and technology. Her emphasis on the Service yields a new vision of Bonney’s significance at a time when we question the press’s legitimacy.