Mentor Program
Kimberly dela Cruz is an independent photographer and journalist based in the Philippines. While studying Journalism, she became a student activist and started carrying a camera in protests. She began her career as a photo correspondent for the Philippine Daily Inquirer in 2013 before transitioning to documentary photography and working for different publications.
Dela Cruz has been covering the war on drugs in the Philippines since 2016 and the following year co-produced Si Kian, a children’s book on the murder of Kian Delos Santos that won a National Children’s Book Award. In 2018, she became a fellow for the International Women’s Media Foundation and was sent to cover migration, LGBTQI and women’s issues in El Salvador. Her project “Death of Nation,” chronicling the crime scenes in Manila and the lives of the families affected by the killings was shortlisted for Magnum Foundation’s Inge Morath Award in 2019 and was awarded the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund for Humanistic Photography in 2021. Her work has appeared in various publications and exhibits across the world.
