Breaking news: 2025 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Photography
Steven Molina Contreras was named a 2025 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow, receiving an unrestricted $8,000 grant to support his photographic practice. The fellowship, celebrating 40 years of supporting artists across New York State, honors peer-recognized creative excellence.
Full details: https://bit.ly/2025_NYSCANYFA
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Featured in The Aspen Times
Photographer and artist Steven Molina Contreras was recently featured in The Aspen Times for his role in Anderson Ranch Arts Center’s Latine Visiting Artists Program. In between Aspen and Carbondale, CO, Contreras led a series of workshops with students from Bridges High School and Aspen Middle School, guiding them to reimagine personal narratives through reflective self‑portraits and collage work. By bringing both Spanish and English into the creative process, he fostered relatability and comfort, offering students a refreshing break from everyday life and an empowering glimpse of their own agency through photography.
Full details: https://bit.ly/Aspen-Times-SMC
Featured in W Magazine
W spotlighted artist Steven Molina Contreras in its “13 Artists Share the Stories Behind Their 2024 Creator Labs Photo Fund Photographs,” showcasing his ongoing project Adelante, a poignant portrait series captured between El Salvador and New York that explores migration, family bonds, and portraiture.
Full details: https://www.wmagazine.com/culture/google-pixel-creator-labs-2024-photos
Visiting Artist at Anderson Ranch Arts Center
Steven Molina Contreras joins the 2025 Latine Visiting Artists Program at the esteemed Anderson Ranch Arts Center, a nationally recognized hub for contemporary art and education. He will lead community workshops and engage Aspen-area students in projects exploring identity, language, and creative agency through photography and collaborative artmaking.
Full details: https://www.andersonranch.org/programs/2025-latine-art-programs/
Interview with The Creative Independent
Steven Molina Contreras speaks with Daniel Sanchez Torres about the importance of pacing himself in an often fast-moving art world, cultivating a sustainable and intentional creative practice, and navigating the balance between deeply personal work and professional commitments. The conversation offers candid insights into his process, the role of community and identity in his art, and his approach to sustaining a long-term artistic vision. Full details:
Full details: http://bit.ly/3HAkkXB
2024 Creator Labs Photo Fund Recipient
Steven Molina Contreras was selected as one of thirty artists to receive the 2024 Creator Labs Photo Fund, an initiative by Google’s Creator Labs and Aperture that provides $6,000 grants and a Google Pixel device to support photographers and lens-based artists at pivotal moments in their careers. Now in its third year, the program continues its mission to champion emerging image makers and amplify their creative voices.
Full details: https://aperture.org/editorial/announcing-the-winners-of-the-2024-creator-labs-photo-fund/
Acquisition by the Hood Museum of Art — Mother Alma #3, She’ll Hold You for a Lifetime
The Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College acquired Steven Molina Contreras’s Mother Alma #3, She’ll Hold You for a Lifetime (2019, from the series Adelante), an archival inkjet print purchased through the Sondra and Charles Gilman Jr. Foundation Fund. This intimate portrait channels themes of maternal strength, spiritual guidance, and generational connection, marking one of the museum’s first acquisitions by a contemporary Salvadoran artist and expanding its representation of Latinx perspectives in contemporary photography.
Full details: https://hoodmuseum.dartmouth.edu/objects/2022.77.1
Hood Museum of Art Exhibition Essay
Hood Museum of Art published the exhibition essay “Connections Across the Collection: The Site of the Table,” featuring Steven Molina Contreras’s photograph 9 PM Dinner (2018). In the essay, Contreras’s work is placed in dialogue with Carrie Mae Weems’s seminal Kitchen Table Series, drawing connections between their shared explorations of domestic space, intimacy, and cultural narrative. By situating 9 PM Dinner alongside Weems’s work, the essay highlights how Contreras reflects on family, migration, and memory, revealing the dining table as a site where personal histories intersect with broader social and cultural contexts.
Full details: https://sites.dartmouth.edu/meanwhileatthemuseum/2024/08/26/connections-across-the-collection-the-site-of-the-table/?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAaaCuq2cGjUb6IkKHAx5ytXc9EMO0pmeMhfYHn7id9jn6zWQadDwZ7ksH3k_aem_ryoEG4Od5hETNjKv8Eh4wA
Acquisition by the Hood Museum of Art — 9PM Dinner
The Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College acquired Steven Molina Contreras’s 9PM Dinner (2018, from the series Mi Familia Inmigrante), an archival inkjet print purchased through the Sondra and Charles Gilman Jr. Foundation Fund. Capturing a moment of familial intimacy under the strain of migration and separation, the photograph speaks to broader themes of belonging, resilience, and cultural memory. This acquisition marks an important inclusion of Salvadoran diasporic narratives within the museum’s permanent collection.
Full details: https://hoodmuseum.dartmouth.edu/objects/2022.77.2
Featured in The New Yorker
The New Yorker’s Photo Department featured Steven Molina Contreras’s project Adelante, curated and edited by photo editor Marvin Orellana. The series confronts the notion of the American Dream through three interwoven narratives: the artist’s stepfather’s brief deportation, his relationship with his mother and sisters, and his desire to reconnect with his birth father and country, El Salvador. Through these personal histories, Contreras reflects on what is lost and gained through forward momentum, blending intimate storytelling with broader themes of migration, family, and identity.
Full details: https://www.instagram.com/p/CKkEV-VnkVg/
2022 Woodstock Artist-in-Residence
Steven Molina Contreras was selected as a 2022 Woodstock Artist-in-Residence at the Center for Photography at Woodstock (CPW), a program supporting emerging and under-recognized voices in photography. The residency provides time, space, and resources for artists to create new work, fostering experimentation and dialogue within a supportive community. During his time at CPW, Contreras advanced his ongoing projects exploring migration, family, and cultural memory, contributing to the program’s legacy of amplifying diverse perspectives in contemporary lens-based art.
Full details: https://bit.ly/CPW-SMC
NYC Tourism “Rising Star”
Steven Molina Contreras was named a “Rising Star” by NYC Tourism, an honor recognizing emerging creatives whose work is shaping New York City’s cultural landscape. Celebrated for his portrait-based photographic practice, Contreras engages deeply with themes of migration, identity, and community, creating images that bridge personal history and collective memory while contributing to the city’s vibrant artistic dialogue.
Full details: https://www.nyctourism.com/articles/rising-star-steven-contreras/
Nominated for the Leica Oskar Barnack Newcomer Award 2021
Steven Molina Contreras was selected to submit to the prestigious Leica Oskar Barnack Newcomer Award, an international competition honoring outstanding documentary and conceptual photography. In 2021, 100 world-renowned photographic experts from 43 countries—including curators, gallerists, art directors, and photographers—nominated emerging talents for consideration. This nomination alone is a significant recognition, reflecting Contreras’s growing impact and the esteem of respected figures shaping the global photography landscape.
Full details: https://www.leica-oskar-barnack-award.com/en/
Aperture Portfolio Prize 2021 Finalist
Steven Molina Contreras was named a finalist for the Aperture Foundation’s prestigious Portfolio Prize for his project Adelante. The annual award recognizes emerging photographers and lens-based artists whose work merits greater recognition, identifying contemporary trends and exceptional talent in the field. In 2021, Aperture’s editors reviewed more than 1,200 submissions, selecting five shortlisted artists and twenty finalists from around the world. Contreras’s inclusion places Adelante alongside a diverse cohort of artists whose practices reflect the breadth, innovation, and urgency of contemporary photography.
Full details: https://aperture.org/editorial/announcing-the-2021-aperture-portfolio-prize-shortlist/
Featured in the Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times highlighted Steven Molina Contreras’s work in its coverage of Aperture’s landmark issue Latinx, which surveys a century of Latino image-making. In the feature, arts writer Carolina A. Miranda describes Contreras’s photographs as “tender” portrayals of his Salvadoran milieu, situating his practice alongside influential and emerging voices shaping the visual narrative of Latinx communities past and present.
2021 Light Work Artist-in-Residence
Steven Molina Contreras was selected as a 2021 Artist-in-Residence at Light Work, an internationally recognized photography center in Syracuse, NY, dedicated to supporting emerging and under-recognized artists. The residency provides time, space, technical support, and resources for artists to create new work and experiment with their practice. During his month-long residency, Contreras advanced projects exploring migration, diaspora, and cultural memory, joining a distinguished roster of past residents who have made significant contributions to contemporary photography.
Full details: https://www.lightwork.org/news/announcing-the-2021-light-work-artists-in-residence/
Introducing: Steven Molina Contreras, Aperture Foundation
Aperture published a profile of Steven Molina Contreras by managing editor Brendan Embser, highlighting his series Mi Familia Inmigrante (2018). The work envisions his family as both documentary subjects and collaborators, capturing the intimacy of private Latinx family moments. Writer and professor Yxta Maya Murray compared his ability to evoke such intimacy to Roy DeCarava, Paola Paredes, and Laura Aguilar, noting his “eye for detail robs you of your breath.” The feature frames Contreras’s photographs as both deeply personal and resonant within broader conversations on immigration and American identity.
Full details: https://aperture.org/editorial/introducing-steven-molina-contreras/