#letusintroduceyouto ICP Doc’26 student Celia Wong @celiaw.inframe
Celia Wong is a Hong Kong-born, North American-based documentary photographer. With two decades of experience in development finance across the Global South, she has partnered with underserved communities, investing in local ecosystems to advance shared social and environmental goals. This background has given her a nuanced understanding of how broader social and economic structures shape everyday life.
Drawing on this vantage point, Celia brings a distinct perspective to her visual practice, one that translates complex systems into personal human stories. Currently enrolled in the Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism program at the International Center of Photography, she is developing her year-long project, The Shape of Comfort—a visual exploration of the emotional terrain of adulthood, uncovering the enduring threads of connection in an increasingly fragmented world.
Portfolio Day, review portfolios of students graduating from the One-Year Certificate Programs in Creative Practices and Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism May 21. International Center of Photography ICP, New York. @icp@icp_creative_practices@icp_docit thanks to @simonfasslerphoto and Sarah Stadelmann @sarahbigonzi
#letusintroduceyouto ICP Doc’26 student Yanara Suenaga @y.suenaga_
Yanara Suenaga (b. Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico) is a Mexican and Japanese-descendant photographer currently based in New York. Her experience shapes a practice centered on perception and connection, guided by a heightened sensitivity to the sensory and silent dimensions of human experience.
Before turning to photography, she was immersed in academic work within the field of philosophy of law. At 19, she left her hometown and moved to Mexico City to continue her law studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), where she later worked as a research assistant. She went on to pursue a master’s degree in philosophy of law, which she began in Mexico and completed in New York during a research stay, later continuing into doctoral studies in Spain. Over time, however, her path gradually shifted away from academia toward a more intuitive, creative and experiential way of engaging with the world, leading her to pause her doctoral studies in 2024.
She currently studies Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism at ICP, exploring intimacy, identity, and the boundaries between self and others.
#letusintroduceyouto ICP Doc ‘26 student Paola Gutierrez @paolagutierrezz
Paola Gutierrez is a Mexican documentary photographer based in New York City. She studied graphic design at Universidad de Monterrey while also developing her photography practice.
Her work spans weddings, events, and portraiture, shaped by an interest in everyday moments and how people naturally reveal themselves in front of the camera. She is drawn to memory, identity, and belonging as they appear in real life, unposed and in-between.
She is currently studying Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism at the International Center of Photography in New York.
#letusintroduceyouto ICP Doc ‘26 student Ruo-Jia Liang @roll_llo
Ruo-Jia Liang (Ruo) is a Taiwanese artist and designer born in 1996. She has over six years of professional experience in the motion design industry, specializing in visual design for public programs, live performances, and design-based 3D animations. Her work has earned prestigious international recognition, including the D&AD Yellow Pencil, New York ADC Gold Cube, and Red Dot Award.
Her photography journey began in 2019. The difficulty of finding a memorial portrait for her grandfather’s funeral motivated her to document themes of existence and loss, later inspiring her project on the Hakka folk ritual “Huan Lao Yuan” (還老願).
Currently based in New York, she is pursuing Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism at the International Center of Photography as a Director’s Fellowship recipient. There, she is developing “The Meter,” an interdisciplinary project combining fixed-focus photography at a one-meter distance with interactive depth-sensing technology to explore the boundaries of seeing and being seen.
This weekend ICP doc students participated in a workshop dedicated to understanding the craft of bookmaking, sequencing, and narrative. Job well done to all who participated! #icp #bookmaking
#letusintroduceyouto ICP Doc ‘26 student Elisa Pedrani @eliisapedrani
Elisa Pedrani is an Italian-Bulgarian documentary photographer and photojournalist, born in Milan in 2003.
After completing classical studies in high school, she attended Mohole School, where she developed her graduation project “Chiora si?”, a reportage set in the poorest region of the EU in Bulgaria. The project was later published in Il Fotografo magazine.
She then began working as a photojournalist for Agenzia Fotogramma - IPA, collaborating with major Italian publications such as la Repubblica, Corriere della Sera, and L’Espresso, among others. In her work, alongside her day-to-day assignments, she often takes news stories and, by moving away from the conventions of daily news reporting, transforms them into deeper, more personal projects.
In her long-term series, she seeks a deeply human dimension, one that moves “at a human pace,” often in contrast with the speed typically associated with photojournalism.
#letusintroduceyouto ICP Doc ‘26 student Sara Meneses Cuapio @cuapiomsara
Sara Meneses Cuapio (b. 1995) is a photographer and designer born and raised in Tlaxcala, Mexico. From a family of Nahua descent, her work centers on identity and memory within her lineage.
Her practice moves between documentary photography and staged imagery, working across reality and metaphor. Through manual processes, Sara activates the spectral, generating images that evoke dreamlike experiences, ethical perspectives, and memories. She conceives nature, darkness, the hidden, and the intimate as spaces where the sacred and the visceral coexist.
Sara holds a degree in Craft Design with additional studies in Art History and Social Anthropology. She is a graduate of the Photography Production Seminar at Centro de la Imagen in Mexico. In 2022, she received the Young Creators Grant from the National Fund for Culture and the Arts. She has been nominated for Ones to Watch by the British Journal of Photography, the Joop Swart Masterclass, and the Leica Oskar Barnack Award, where she was a finalist in 2024. Her work has been exhibited at venues including the Ernst Leitz Museum, BASE Milano with PhotoVogue, and the Biarritz Film Festival, among others. Her practice has been featured in various publications, including the journal of Mexico’s National Photographic Archive. She has also collaborated with institutions such as the École des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. Sara is currently a Paul Fusco Fellow in the Documentary Practice Program at the International Center of Photography.
#letusintroduceyouto ICP Doc ‘26 student Arielle Shannon @arielleshannon
Arielle Shannon is an NYC-based documentary photographer from Florida. Her documentary work examines communities defined by one-dimensional ideologies or rigid narratives, and focuses on people inside systems that tend to flatten identity. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, New York Post, Elle Decor, Eater, Daily Mail, and Time Out New York, among others. Alongside her documentary work, Shannon has spent years in the fashion industry as an art director, stylist, producer, and behind-the-scenes photographer, including in publications such as Rolling Stone, GQ, PAPER Magazine, The New York Times, Vogue, and Elle Decor.
#letusintroduceyouto ICP Doc ‘26 student Daniel Jiménez @danielj.paz
Daniel Jimenez is a New York–based visual storyteller. His vocation for image-making began early, growing up in southern Colombia. He studied filmmaking at Universidad Nacional de Colombia, where he produced the fictional short film En el Aire, about a young BMX athlete and his relationship with fear. The film reflects themes that continue to shape his work: self-representation, identity, and the tension between passion and obsession.
While living in Bogotá, Daniel worked as a telenovela screenwriter before relocating to New York, where he began freelancing as a video editor. He is currently enrolled in the Documentary Practices and Visual Storytelling one-year program at the International Center of Photography (ICP), where he is developing Wanderers, a photo diary exploring the streets of Middle Village, Queens.
#letusintroduceyouto ICP Doc ‘26 student Noah Bernstein @studio_barnbern
Noah Bernstein is a documentary photographer from White Plains, NY. He began photographing in 2018, while in college at the University of Vermont, as a means to document Burlington. After graduation, he travelled through Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, photographing the dichotomy between the ancient temples and modern cities. After working in operations roles at a fin-tech company and a ski manufacturer, Noah began doing event, concert and portraiture photography. He spent the summers of 2024 and 2025 as the staff photographer at a sleepaway summer camp, chronicling the unique generational cycle of an 85-year-old community. Noah’s work engages with the idea of images as palimpsests, using contemporary photography to both remember and invoke the past. He is currently enrolled in the One Year Certificate program at the International Center for Photography, studying Documentary Practices and Visual Journalism.
