NEW YORK, NY.- Aperture will present Felipe Romero Beltrán: 2022 Aperture Portfolio Prize Winner, an exhibition hosted by Baxter St at the Camera Club of New York from July 27 through August 27. Romero Beltrán was awarded the 2022 Portfolio Prize for his series Dialect, a project about young immigrant men navigating legal limbo in Spain.

As Kaelen Wilson-Goldie writes in Aperture, Dialect delves “into the routines, memories, and experiences of a small group of young immigrants who crossed into Spain from Morocco as minors and are living in a refugee center, awaiting the normalization of their legal status.” Comparing Romero Beltrán’s work to projects by leading artists, including Yto Barrada, Hassan Khan, and Bouchra Khalili, Wilson-Goldie also notes Romero Beltrán’s deep collaboration with his subjects: “Rather than presenting types, tropes, or tragic cases, Romero Beltrán’s images introduce viewers to the humorous quirks and wondrous specificities of Youssef, Hamza, Bilal, and other young men, named and almost knowable characters who, moreover, have a say in how the work is made and shown.”

Dialect was chosen from more than one thousand submissions. As part of the prize, the artist’s work was also published in the Summer 2022 issue of Aperture magazine and he received a three-thousand-dollar cash award.

The Aperture Portfolio Prize aims to spotlight new talent in photography, identifying contemporary trends in the field and highlighting artists whose work deserves greater recognition. In addition to the winner, Aperture’s editors selected four runners-up for the 2022 Portfolio Prize: Juan Brenner, Margo Ovcharenko, Adrien Selbert, and Allie Tsubota.

They join the ranks of illustrious past winners of and shortlisted artists for the Portfolio Prize, including Dannielle Bowman, William Camargo, Jessica Chou, Chance DeVille, Eli Durst, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Natalie Krick, Jack Latham, Jarod Lew, Daniel Jack Lyons, Mark McKnight, Drew Nikonowicz, Sarah Palmer, Anouchka Renaud-Eck, Bryan Schutmaat, Ka-Man Tse, and Guanyu Xu.

Felipe Romero Beltrán (born in Bogotá, 1992) is a Colombian photographer based in Madrid, Spain. Felipe focuses on social issues, dealing with the tension that new narratives introduce in the field of documentary photography. At the same time, he is currently preparing a PhD dissertation on photography at Complutense University of Madrid. His practice, characterized by its interest on social matters, is the result of long-term projects accompanied by extensive research on the subject.