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��������Ƶ alum and faculty Jonathan Castillo shares insight into his work and the ideas shaping his practice.

Two ��������Ƶ alumni have been named , one of the most prestigious honors in the arts and humanities. 

Photographer and Columbia faculty member  and photographer, writer, and curator  are among this year’s recipients. Grant, an associate professor of photography at The University of Alabama, has exhibited work nationally and internationally, with pieces held in major museum collections and editorial photography published in “The New York Times” and “The Wall Street Journal.” 

Awarded annually by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the fellowships support individuals who have demonstrated exceptional creative ability through a rigorous peer review process. Fellows join a distinguished group of artists, writers, and scholars whose work is shaping the cultural landscape. 

Castillo's work is grounded in personal and communal histories, tracing how individuals and communities navigate larger structures of power and bureaucracy.  Themes such as immigration, labor and debt are embedded in his collaborative projects. 

Working across photography, video, installation, and handmade paper, Castillo’s practice is grounded in people, place, and the systems that shape everyday life. His projects explore immigration, labor, economics, and identity, often centering communities whose stories are overlooked or simplified. 

To learn more about the work behind the recognition, Columbia sat down with Castillo to discuss his practice, process, and the ideas driving his photography. 

A Practice Grounded in People and Place 

From documenting immigrant-owned businesses across Chicago to installing work in O’Hare’s Terminal 5, Jonathan Castillo, MFA ’19, is turning everyday spaces into sites of visibility—and earning national recognition in the process. 

A faculty member at ��������Ƶ, Castillo has been named a 2026 Fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation and a finalist for the —two major honors recognizing both his body of work and its future trajectory. 

From Columbia to O’Hare 

Castillo traces many of his recent milestones back to his time at Columbia, where relationships with faculty, visiting curators, and institutions like the Museum of Contemporary Photography helped shape his path. 

“I can draw a direct line between Columbia College and my large-scale, permanent installation at O’Hare,” Castillo says. 

What began as a graduate thesis project documenting small businesses across Chicago evolved into “,” an ongoing body of work examining migration, resilience, and belonging. With guidance from faculty, Castillo refined the project to focus on immigrant-owned businesses—creating a framework that would later expand into public art and national recognition. 

That trajectory wasn’t accidental. 

“When a curator or a professor tells me, ‘You should apply to this,’ I don’t question it—I just do it,” he says. 

 

Selections from the series are now permanently installed at . The installation features 17 large-scale, illuminated photographs—each more than 11 feet tall—transforming a project that began in the classroom into a public-facing experience seen by travelers from around the world. 

The commission itself was part of a longer chain of relationships—one critique, one studio visit, one recommendation leading to the next opportunity. 

Castillo’s work continues to engage with the city through public-facing projects. In a commission for the City of Chicago’s Citywide Plan, he adapted his practice to focus on Black- and Latino-owned businesses on the South and West Sides, responding to disparities in business ownership and access identified in the city’s data. 

Rather than starting over, he built on what he had already created. 

“I said, I’m kind of already doing this—I’ll adapt the project to fit what the city is asking,” he says. 

The project extended beyond photography, resulting in a publicly distributed photo  book, postcards, and framed editioned works acquired into Chicago's public art collection and installations at City Hall, Midway Airport, and the Chicago Cultural Center. 

 

Expanding the Work 

With support from the Guggenheim Foundation, Castillo plans to expand his work beyond Chicago, photographing immigrant-owned businesses across the country and reframing the project as part of a broader national conversation. 

“I’ve always thought of the Chicago work as a starting point,” he says. “I’m going to make it a truly national project.” 

As an adjunct professor of instruction at Columbia, Castillo integrates his professional experience directly into his teaching. In what he describes as a “professional practices bootcamp,” he walks students through the realities of building a creative career—from budgets and applications to client outreach and networking. 

“My problem in school was that no one talked about the business of being an artist,” he says. “When you get out, it’s a mystery.” 

Castillo encourages students to take full advantage of the opportunities around them—especially the connections available through Columbia’s creative community. 

“Show up to things. Go to lectures, go to openings, meet people, apply to everything,” he says. 

He often shares advice from Columbia Professor Emeritus Dawoud Bey: “It’s impossible to make good work, show it to lots of people, and for nothing to happen.” 

• Photography
• Visual Arts

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